


breath of ash, bone of dust

by qqueenofhades



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hades and Persephone Mythology Fusion, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Angst, F/M, Gods and Monsters, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Immortality, Two Shot, Urban Fantasy, Witch Karen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-08-28 19:53:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 55,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16729692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qqueenofhades/pseuds/qqueenofhades
Summary: Frank shrugs, almost diffidently, as if to say he’s glad to hear it, and he still isn’t used to anyone welcoming the sight. Maybe there are some, people who are old and ready to rest and who have lived a good life, who sit up and wait for him, on the nights he chooses to venture out of the underworld and take them personally in hand. But as they stand there face to face, him dark and rugged and grim and Karen pink-cheeked, flushed, blossoms trailing from a frozen tree and grass rising from the barren ground, the contrast could not be more striking. Winter and spring, death and life, hell and heaven. Then leaf subsides to leaf, and so Eden sank to grief.Kastle Hades/Persephone AU.





	1. Chapter 1

**I.**

The wind is blowing from the north today, and that always means that shit is going to get a little weird. Karen Page doesn’t know exactly why that is, other than that it’s drawing down the fae from the rest of New England, and growing up in a tiny, rural town in Vermont, she learned early on not to mess with it. There were always strange lights or sounds at dusk, something lurking just beyond the bend, a strict folk wisdom that if you went into the woods at twilight, you didn’t know where or if you’d come out. Don’t look a stranger in the eye, if he walks toward you on an empty road. Don’t look out your window too long past dark. It wasn’t as much as some of the places in, say, the Appalachians, where you can’t breathe without taking Them in, but it was there, those pieces of small-town lore that your city-slicker friends laugh at when you tell them. When Karen first moved to New York, it took her months to be willing to be out at midnight. Just didn’t seem worth the risk.

New York, for that matter, has a very different sort of magic: loud, grimy, haphazard, unapologetic, not easily visible on the surface but there as soon as you scratch down. It’s not like Boston, which is a city absolutely ridden with ghosts. You can’t take two goddamn steps in Boston without the scent of pipe smoke drifting from some Revolution-era tavern (plenty of people swear they’ve pounded back brewskis with Sam Adams himself, only realizing it when he disappeared at the end of the night), without the distant war-whoops of men dumping tea in the harbor, without a tinge of Victorian witchlight illuminating cobblestone streets in the Back Bay, and pretty much anyone who ever went to Harvard being glimpsed strolling across the Quad. The shadows of whalers and fishermen flit along the coast, calling in thick New England accents to bait the longlines. Someone came in shaken from a stormy night in Eastham, on Cape Cod, and reported that they’d just seen a big three-masted ship break up – well, they did, but it was the famous pirate Black Sam Bellamy, and the wreck of his _Whydah_ in 1717. You don’t even want to know what happens in Salem. Mount Washington in New Hampshire, known for its ferociously high winds, is definitely a door to _somewhere_ (Oz?), but nobody has ever been sure.

If she’s honest, Karen was hoping to leave all that hedge magic behind when she moved to the city. She wanted somewhere where reality could generally be counted on to run as it’s supposed to, where people scoff at superstition and don’t end up hexed for it – a place that felt grown-up, away from all the children’s stories and formless boogeymen of her youth. New York could be relied upon to be brash and abrasive and thoroughly non-magical, she thought – which, at least in the first two departments, it is. But she’s not so sure that she has escaped the latter after all. It pokes up in tendrils, curling shoots. For example, you really should put a buck in the violin case of that red-haired man who occasionally busks in Times Square station, and tends to wear green. You’ll have spectacular good luck if you do, and absolutely terrible luck if you don’t.

(Perhaps, Karen thinks, it would be easier, so much easier, if she could just blame the monsters for what happened to Kevin. And yet she can’t, and it makes her wonder if, no matter how far she runs, she will ever be able to escape the monster she most wants to flee.)

Karen has managed, more or less, to live a refreshingly ordinary life in the city, though far from uneventful. There’s been the situation with Union Allied, her old employer, and plenty of other ones. She now works as an office manager at Nelson & Murdock, a local law firm in Hell’s Kitchen that. . . well, the best word for its business practices is “idiosyncratic.” Its chief, and indeed sole, attorneys, are two lifelong best friends, Franklin “Foggy” Nelson and Matthew Murdock. They were born here, went through Columbia Law together, and have a fierce and genuine commitment to doing true public-interest work, for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged members of their community. Unfortunately, this does not pay many, or indeed any, bills. They’re not quite run on tin cans and string, but sometimes it feels that way.

Karen has gotten close to Foggy and Matt, over the months she’s worked here. It was a complicated situation, how that happened, and was kicked off when her life was saved by a mysterious man in black, a masked vigilante who people call the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, or sometimes Daredevil. It’s not clear if he possesses supernal powers aside from a truly magnificent ability to be neck-deep in shit at all times, but there are certainly other figures who walk the streets with _some_ kind of heightened ability. Some of them, like this guy, are mostly benevolent, or at least chaotic good. Others, you cross paths with at your peril.

Today, however, the north wind is blowing, and Karen has already walked past, she is sure, the same bodega three times before she finally makes it to the office. Foggy is sucking down a large Dunkin Donuts coffee and scowling at the amicus brief they need to submit for Mrs. Gonzalez. Matt isn’t there yet. For a blind man – which he is, due to some kind of childhood accident which Karen has tactfully not pried into – he seems to get into an awful lot of trouble.

“Hey, Foggy.” Karen drops her bag on the chair and unbuttons her jacket. “Did you want me to check that over?” Lawyers, she has discovered, are horrible proofreaders.

“Not yet, I still need to troll LexisNexis for like, ten more case references.” Foggy sighs and boots up his computer, taps his fingers waiting for the internet to load (their broadband is far from blazing) and dutifully starts clicking away. Karen picks up the phone and starts checking  messages, and decides not to mention any low-level elemental bugfuckery, to give it the technical term. After all Foggy, as a native New Yorker, probably has a substantially higher threshold for “weird” than 99% of the world, and besides, the wind could have changed direction by lunchtime, bring in that cold front off the Atlantic or the faint reek of the Tidewater. You might want to hope it does. Karen once heard that someone swore the Statue of Liberty said that her arm was getting tired. If she actually put down that torch, well.

She and Foggy work steadily until about eleven o’clock, when Matt finally turns up. As is par for the course, he has several new bruises on his face and claims that he got up too inattentively for a midnight snack and walked into a wall. While this is at least superficially plausible for a blind guy, he has the best hearing of anyone Karen has ever met, his other senses seem to more than compensate for his missing vision, and besides, if the amount of walls Matt supposedly walks into are true, he would be the clumsiest goddamn person in the entire world. She doesn’t buy it, not for someone as precise as he is, as pointed, but if he keeps his secrets, he’s not the only one. If he notices any influence from the north wind, he doesn’t say so. “We going to be able to cover the electric?” he asks Karen. Other lawyers plan to buy Beemers and vacation homes; Nelson & Murdock are in a monthly disagreement with the power company over whether the lights stay on. “That’s due the twentieth, right?”

“Yes, we should make it, but we really need to take something that pays.” Karen serves as de facto accountant for the firm, mostly because the accounts barely exist and don’t need a professional to oversee them. Foggy and Matt hate turning down anyone in real need of help, and accept all kinds of goods in trade – fruit baskets, home baking, paint jobs, whatever – rather than actual hard cash. Great for their good-person quotient, perhaps, but less so for their bank account. “Foggy, Mrs. Gonzalez’s son said she had a little money, right?”

“Yeah, but that’s coming out of her Social Security, and the feds are paying her squat to start with.” Foggy types faster, pen between his teeth, frowning. “Besides, given as she’s literally suing her landlord for illegally kicking her out to develop super expensive condos, and lying about the lead content in her pipes, I’d feel kind of bad asking her to pony up for it.”

Karen doesn’t respond immediately. She loves Foggy and Matt for their generosity, but sometimes she feels like she’s the only person who remembers that this is a business, that you can have all the good intentions in the world, but something needs to come of it. Foggy and Matt are professionals and should be compensated in a marketable way for their time and expertise (those five-figure student loan debts are not paying themselves, for starters). Obviously, they can charge on a sliding scale or an income-sensitive basis, but they _should_ be more assertive about actually doing that. After all, if the firm folds, they can’t help anyone, and Karen doesn’t know if this makes her insensitive or just pragmatic. Of course she wants to help people too. It’s just that she thinks it should be fair. The three of them do scrape a salary out of it, but not much, and living here isn’t exactly cheap. Karen’s been thinking about a second job, though she has no idea how she’d fit it in, time-wise. Needs are needs. And she doesn’t want to go back.

“There might still be a little left from that retainer the Schmidts gave us,” Matt suggests, in the tone of a man who is hoping vainly for several extra zeros to suddenly appear. “Or I can – ”

“I have an idea,” Karen interrupts. It’s kind of out there, but what the hell, if there’s any day for it, it’s now. “I just need to. . . run an errand.”

She dodges Foggy and Matt’s follow-up questions about what exactly this errand is, promises it won’t take long, and puts back on her jacket, grabbing her bag and emerging into the murky mid-October damp. She takes the 1 a few stops and gets off at Times Square, glancing around until she hears the strains of a lively up-tempo Irish reel, sounds like something from _Riverdance._ She heads that way, opens her wallet, and puts $10 in the case, making sure to catch his eye and smile. Leprechauns are always daft for a pretty lass, or so she’s heard before.

He grins back, gap-toothed, and doffs his hat as he continues to play, as a speeding suit no doubt late for a very important meeting on Wall Street bulldozes right past and almost overturns the case. It’s not even a minute later when there’s an outraged yell, people turn around, and it is thus discovered that the suit, passing under some scaffolding where they’re doing some renovation, had a sizeable portion of it fall on his head. He’s voluminous about wanting a lawyer, and Karen bites her tongue on suggesting that she knows a few good ones. It looks like this guy might actually be able to afford one, too.

Indeed, moved by some inexplicable impulse, she goes over to help, makes sure he isn’t badly hurt, offers to call an ambulance (it’s not a serious wound, but it’s definitely bleeding a lot) and even calls whoever his important meetings are to tell them that Mr. So-and-so will be late because of the plebeians. He is sufficiently impressed by her helpfulness that he opens his patent-leather wallet and shucks out a few large bills. Karen does the usual thing of insisting that she can’t take them, and then gracefully pockets them. Makes sure he’s been handed over to the paramedics and then gets up to go, wondering if that was the extent of the assistance she can expect – not bad, and more than they’ve made outright in several weeks, but still –

It’s then, as she turns around, that she catches sight of someone leaning against the wall, a few paces away. He’s wearing a hooded black sweatshirt, jeans, and jackboots, and he has a dog – a mastiff of some kind, big and brown and barrel-chested – on a chain-link leash. He looks like a hobo or a vagrant, and Karen half-expects he’s going to ask her for the money he just doubtless saw the businessman give her, but there’s something about him that’s a little strange. He has an undercut, dark and thick on top and sides and back shaved close, in a way that looks military, and a crag of a much-broken nose, strong jaw, and brown eyes under shadowed brows. His mouth quirks sardonically when he looks at her, and his voice, when he speaks, is low and gravelly. “That was some pretty impressive bullshit there, lady.”

“I beg your – ?” Karen stares at him, in case this is someone else the leprechaun has sent her way and she should kiss hands in anticipation of another windfall, but no, she’s pretty sure this is just a run-of-the-mill asshole. New York, after all, is also in no shortage of those. “Do we – ?”

He seems inordinately amused by that question, though she can’t see what’s so funny about it. After a pause, he shrugs. “Nah.”

Karen isn’t sure what to make of that, or him in general. She wonders if she should reach slowly into her purse for the pepper spray she keeps there (she also keeps a .380, but that is definitely an excessive response – it’s not like she isn’t used to _Men ™)._ New Yorkers can give their blunt opinion whether or not you ever asked for it, and she can detect just enough of a Northeast twang that she thinks that’s where he’s probably from. She manages an awkward, close-mouthed smile. “Right, well, okay. I’ll just – ”

She doesn’t think he’s moved from where he’s leaning against the wall, but somehow he’s still in front of her. She glares at him pointedly. “I need to get going.”

“Sure,” he says. “Don’t let me stop you.”

Karen glances around surreptitiously to see if anyone else has been alarmed by the appearance of this guy, who looks like someone who could set down a backpack containing a pressure cooker filled with nails and ammonium nitrate, but if they are, they’re too busy to take note. She then looks at the dog, who pants in a friendly fashion, tongue lolling. A total psychopath wouldn’t own a nice dog, right? She doesn’t even know why she’s still standing here or having anything resembling a conversation with him. Tell him to fuck off, in true New York fashion, and –

“The money,” her jackass interlocutor says, nodding at her purse. “That’s why you were talking to him, huh? If not, why else were you here?”

“Excuse – ?” Karen clutches her bag close. Either he’s about to rob her or he thinks she’s a con woman, is about to perform some self-righteous citizen’s arrest bullshit, and either way, she doesn’t want the hassle. “Why the hell are _you_ here?”

Once again, that seems to amuse him. “In case I was needed,” he says, after a slight pause. “It’s my goddamn job, unfortunately. You have a good day now, ma’am.”

With that, while Karen is about to point out that she was having a far better one before he turned up and opened his trap, he tugs at the dog’s leash, it gambols after him, and the two of them stride off into the crowd. He moves with an easy, rangy grace, something almost feline (for all that he’s apparently a dog person) in its focused intensity. Maybe she’s wrong about his predilection for things that go boom, but then, maybe she isn’t. She has an uncomfortable feeling he’s the kind of person you meet on north-wind days, and doesn’t know why, for an odd moment in the harsh glare of the fluorescents, she thought the dog’s shadow had three heads.

Instead, she goes.

**II.**

The next few weeks proceed more or less as usual, or even slightly better. The lights stay on, the bills get (mostly) paid, and they land a case with someone who can write checks that won’t bounce, which is mostly due to Karen’s insistence. She almost forgets about her odd encounter in the subway station, at least until a few days before Halloween. That morning, her upstairs neighbor, Mr. O’Reilly, has a heart attack while picking up his mail, and when Karen leaves for work, he’s on a gurney being given oxygen and the defibrillator is still whining from its charge. It seems like he’ll probably be okay, she’s relieved because he’s a nice old man, and that’s when she glances across the street and sees what’s-his-face. She’s sure it’s him; he looks exactly like he did the other day, though the mutt is missing this time. He stands there with casually folded arms, watching the proceedings with a cool, analytic detachment. Jesus, who _is_ this guy? Some kind of sicko who likes to gape at crime scenes?

Since she feels like someone should say something to him about this habit, and since if he does try anything the cops are right there, Karen pauses, then strides across the street and straight up to him. “Hey,” she says. “How about you move along?”

He jumps, startled from his voyeurism, and looks at her. His eyes are brown, as she noted before, but seen straight on, they are oddly depthless, almost black. It takes him a moment to place her, but then it clicks. “You,” he says. “Surprised you weren’t shakin’ this geezer down too.”

 _“Excuse –_?” That’s it, he definitely thinks she is out to scam the elderly, or at least the unsuspecting, which still seems rich coming from him, or he is trying badly to make a joke. “He’s my neighbor, I just wanted to see if he was all right. I live here. And I know _you_ don’t.”

“You know that, huh?” He shoves both hands into his hoodie pockets and gives her a goading look. It’s clear that he has some kind of innate need to be a contrary asshole, and he seems to be enjoying her irritation. “All right then, ma’am, we’ll go with that.”

“You should leave,” Karen informs him. “Now.”

“In a minute.” He – she still hasn’t gotten any kind of name, which might be useful if she has to put it on a police report or restraining order – has never been totally distracted from Mr. O’Reilly’s ongoing treatment across the way. Yeah, there’s definitely something wrong with him. “Ma’am, out of curiosity, why are you even talking to me?”

That’s an odd question. Karen cocks her head, frowning. “I’d think most people would want to know what you’re doing with the creepy loitering. Wouldn’t you?”

“Most people don’t notice me.” He says this in a totally matter-of-fact way, and doesn’t seem to care whether or not she finds it incredible. “You’re different.”

“Oh?” That puts Karen on her guard, and conscious of a dawning danger. She knew the first time she saw him that this wasn’t someone (some _thing?_ ) to mess with. Rule number one or thereabouts, _don’t look a stranger in the eye on an empty road,_ and she’s already gone well past that. Living in New York has served its purposes, dulled her reflexes somewhat, not made her look twice at everyone who goes by. She takes a few steps backward. “Why is that?”

He glances up at her again in a world-weary way, as if she’s just asked a question he could spend hours trying to explain, and he still isn’t sure she’d get it. “Never mind.”

“What are you doing here?” Karen presses. She can be tenacious as a piranha when she has something in her sights, when things don’t add up or she gets her sixth sense that there’s more to the story, something beneath the surface. “For that matter, what’s your _name?”_

He raises an eyebrow. It’s clear he doesn’t have to answer, and either way, his business might not be the kind that you talk about, but he seems grudgingly impressed by her. After a moment, he says, “Frank.”

“Frank.” Karen fights the old good-girl impulse to hold out her hand and say it’s nice to meet him. He’s undoubtedly rough around the edges, and she still isn’t sure this is a wise idea, but she thinks that someone actively up to no good would have at least tried to hide their face. He doesn’t seem to give a shit if she gets a nice long look at him, or can pick him out of a police lineup later, maybe because he’s confident that there’s nothing she can do to him. “Where’s the dog?”

“Home.” Frank does not appear inclined to elaborate where this is. Under a bridge, for all Karen knows. “You got any other questions for me, ma’am? Because you know, it’s really fuckin’ important that I stand here and answer them.”

“No,” Karen says tartly. Jesus, what a winner. “I need to get going anyway, so, Mr. – ?”

This is a fairly obvious fish for a last name, but if he can tell she’s baiting, he doesn’t bite. Instead, he just shrugs. “You have a good day,” he says, like before. “Karen.”

She frowns, decides to head off before it gets any stranger, and besides, she’s already late for work. It’s not until she’s almost all the way to the office that it hits like a sack of bricks, and makes her stop in her tracks: she didn’t tell him her name. She never did, either time. How the – how the _hell_ did he know who she is? Has he been stalking her? With the kind of personality he appears to possess, and the fact that he has turned up inexplicably twice now, it’s not out of the realm of possibility, and maybe she should call the Fifteenth Precinct and get somebody to look into it. Frank what – Frank who? Maybe he’s a well-known neighborhood character. Maybe, with her luck, she has in fact run into a notorious local spook. He seems much too solid to be a ghost, though. Much too real. And far too much of a dick.

Karen is preoccupied with this puzzle as she makes her way into the office and startles Foggy from an intense perusal of the _New York Law Reports Style Manual._ The look on her face must be telltale, because he frowns. “Karen? Everything okay?”

“I just. . .” Karen doesn’t want to sound histrionic, but she’d admittedly like a few answers. “Everything’s fine. Actually, Foggy, I have a random question. Is there anyone you know of – anyone who hangs around Hell’s Kitchen, like a local character, named Frank? Kind of tough-guy, has a dog?”

Foggy looks blank. “No. Why?”

“No reason,” Karen lies. “Just something that occurred to me.”

“Maybe you should ask Matt,” Foggy suggests. “He knows a lot of weird shit.”

This is true, though if she does, it’ll make it clear that this is not a hypothetical enquiry, and Karen tries to decide how to proceed. She’s not afraid of Frank, exactly, but he exists just that bit outside the ordinary, and she would do well not to attract any more of that energy to herself. She busies herself in sorting a stack of papers, then says, as lightly as she can, “He was just someone I met the other day, and I was wondering if he was someone people knew. That’s all.”

“Not that I can think of.” Foggy screws up his face in concentration. “Should we be worried about this? I mean, you do tend to meet douchebags. Present company totally excepted.”

“Sure, if you want to flatter yourself,” Karen tosses back. She could keep it this way, casual and bantering, and it’s not like Frank has done anything actively illegal. ( _Yet_ , some suspicious voice whispers.) “And no, no, nothing’s wrong. Really.”

“Okay.” Foggy still looks slightly dubious, but he doesn’t press it. “Hey, have you seen the stapler? I swear the gremlins ate it.”

Karen locates the stapler, they do some work, and life carries on as normal. Matt is having another one of his unexplained absences, which Karen tries not to ask about, not if she doesn’t want prying questions into her own sudden mystery. There’s not much assisting to do, in fact, so in midafternoon, Foggy tells her that if she wants to clear off for the day and go do something fun, she can feel free. Karen thanks him, then walks to 50th and Broadway and hops the 1 – back to Times Square, in fact, and she looks around carefully in case either the leprechaun or Frank are in evidence. They’re not, so she hurries through the constant midtown rush, across Bryant Park, and up the steps, between the stone lions, into the New York Public Library.

She doesn’t know what she’s looking for, or what she expects to find, since “guy named Frank, likes dogs, bit of an asshole” is hardly a place to start an investigation. She might be better off searching police reports, but she would definitely need more information, and there are plenty of archived newspapers and microfiche and things she could look at first. There is no discernible reason for Karen to feel so strongly that there is more to the story, or to put effort into uncovering it after he’s basically been an outright jerk to her, but she can’t explain what it is. It’s deeper than an ordinary hunch. Some kind of compulsion that has to be followed, and here she is. It could indeed land her in trouble, big trouble. At least she’s aware of the possibility?

Karen debates whether to ask the reference librarian for help, but the woman looks exactly like Roz the receptionist from _Monsters Inc.,_ frozen-yogurt hairstyle and all, and she is better left undisturbed. So Karen goes up to local history and skims through several years of recent newspapers, but doesn’t find anything that looks like her man. She’s just about to give up when, totally by accident, she stumbles over a Veterans’ Day feature in the _New York Bulletin,_ some kind of methodically researched public-history piece that is clearly hopeful for a Pulitzer or maybe a documentary. Among the people it mentions is Lieutenant Frank Castle, United States Marine Corps, who had some kind of colorful career post-war.

Karen is reading quickly when she reaches the picture, and her heart skips a beat. It’s him – it’s definitely him, if a little more buttoned-up and clean-shaven. But that can’t be right. Because the picture is old, black-and-white, and the date is 1942. Lieutenant Frank Castle is a decorated veteran of the Pacific Theater of World War II. Served in Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Iwo Jima, and other places that remain off the record. Came home after Hiroshima in ’45 and became infamous in New York, fast, for a spate of violent gangland murders he was responsible for, in a two-year period between 1946 and 1948. His entire family, his wife, son, and daughter, had died in unclear circumstances, and he took whole-hog revenge.

For the longest time, Karen stands there, trying to make the picture look different or convince herself that it isn’t the same guy, because there’s no way she met a World War II vet who doesn’t look a day older than almost three-quarters of a century ago. Did he crash a plane into the polar ice and take a long nap too? It’s not completely out of the question. Everyone knows about Steve Rogers. But this seems different, and like she’s about to tug at something and have it spiral out, and she doesn’t know if she’s ready for that.

Karen checks the byline. It’s by Mitchell Ellison, and she opens the paper to double-check the address for the _Bulletin’s_ headquarters. She has no idea what she’s going to ask him, but now that she has some kind of lead, she can’t resist pushing at it. She puts the paper back in the tray and heads out.

It’s the end of the work day, and Karen wonders if she should just drop in on a busy newsroom that’s probably trying to put tomorrow’s edition to bed and doesn’t need some random amateur gumshoe turning up with a question about a very, very cold case. Mitchell Ellison will probably also think she’s crazy if she tells him she may have met the guy. Maybe she should look into whether there’s any record of him post-1948, an obituary or other kind of public document. With what he was up to, the kind of enemies he was making, it doesn’t sound like he was destined for a peaceful end. Vanish in a hail of bullets, not uneventful obscurity. It still _could_ be another guy, she reminds herself. It’s always possible. Even if some part of her is already and unshakably aware that it’s not, and that the world, which she has striven so hard to stitch up and make sensible and ordinary, might be slowly starting to once more split at the seams.

Still, at least she has a full name now, and there might be something to do with that, a Freedom of Information Act request she can file to see if his service records are still classified. She could just ask him if he might be an immortal, casual-like, if she runs into him again, but for several reasons, that would be a bad idea. Karen makes a note to at least ask for the records, and maybe she’ll look up Ellison’s email address on the _Bulletin’s_ website and pretend she’s doing a research project on Castle or something, so it doesn’t sound completely off the ranch. If for some reason (not saying magic) he’s still alive and back in town, it’s possible he could stir up some shit. Someone might want to know.

Karen ducks into a corner Chinese-food place for supper, since she’s pretty sure she doesn’t have any food at home, and eats egg rolls, sweet n’ sour chicken, and rice while doing some furious Googling on her phone. “Frank Castle” gets a few results. He has a Wikipedia page, which lists his date and place of birth as November 15, 1910, Long Island, New York. A death date of c. 1948 is still [citation needed]. That answers one question; there’s no reliably documented appearance for him after that. He’s considered a bit of an urban legend, an unsolved mystery murderer like Jack the Ripper. Not that there’s any doubt about his identity, as apparently he also earned a pithy nickname – in this case, “the Punisher” – for the brutality of his crime scenes, but just what in the goddamn hell happened to the man. Notorious serial killers (that’s also hotly debated; some people think he was a psycho, others think all his victims deserved it) aren’t a thing that society tends to just mislay. One way or another, they get some kind of reckoning.

Karen keeps staring at the Wikipedia picture, the same one Ellison used, until her eyes cross. She wants to say he’s looking pretty spry for a hundred and eight, but also, what the fuck? Is he a vampire? He was out in daylight, but she’s clearly searching for all possible explanations now and not just the sensible ones, and she doesn’t know how that would work anyway. This obviously does send a certain chill down her spine, if she’s crossed paths with some kind of clearly murderous individual, and she wonders why she doesn’t feel more scared than she does. If he has her in his crosshairs, figuratively or literally, that could be an encounter that she won’t necessarily walk away from. But why was he surprised that she talked to him? Just. . . _what?_

No more obvious answers are forthcoming from Wikipedia, as Karen reads that Frank Castle was responsible for at least thirty-seven separate killings that the police knew about, and there’s every possibility that there were more. She shudders and closes the mobile browser, throws her food containers in the garbage, and thinks that she should get going. She’ll probably be spooked enough at every stray cat, what with this charming little bedtime story in her head.

It’s getting late when Karen steps out of the takeout place – not _late_ late, but the commuter traffic is a few hours past, and she does that not-too-fast stride, head up, on the alert, that every woman does at night by herself in the city. Waits at the crossing, looks both ways, and decides she’ll catch the subway from Grand Central. It’s not _that_ far back to Hell’s Kitchen, and in daylight she’d probably just walk, but for obvious reasons, she’s a little on edge right now. She reaches the far side of the street, and –

She jerks her head up, having had the brief and unaccountable sense that something was just eyeing her from a few doors down. God, this is ridiculous, she’s as bad as a kid who stayed up late to watch a scary movie and is now deeply regretting it. But she came this way earlier, and if _(if)_ someone is tracking her movements, maybe she should change it up. Throw some smoke. Or at least go somewhere else public and well-lit. Even a possibly-Highlander can’t just burst in and grab her in the middle of everyone, right?

Karen reaches a hand into her bag and grips her phone, glances over her shoulder, and then chides herself to look a little less openly terrified. She is in midtown Manhattan, one of the most densely populated places on the planet, the spire of the Empire State Building glowing among the forest of skyscrapers behind her, and she is not in any danger. If for any reason she did need to call 911, the NYPD would be here in minutes. She needs to stop being scared of her own shadow, go home, and maybe take a nice hot bath. That seems like the ticket.

She takes a deep breath, shakes her head, and decides that she’s the closest to 28th Street, she can get the 1 from there, and that should be fine. Six of one, half-dozen of another between there and Penn Station, but nobody wants to deal with the madness of Penn at any hour if they can remotely avoid it, and it isn’t far. Karen pulls her coat tighter and starts to walk.

By the time she reaches 28th, she’s feeling a little more settled, and somewhat ashamed of her jumpy reaction earlier. She swipes her Metro card through the turnstiles and heads down to the northbound platform, which is mostly empty. According to the board, it’s ten minutes until the next train arrives. There. See. Nothing to worry about.

Karen paces back and forth, waiting, and finally looks up again to check – only to see that it’s still ten minutes until the next train. Maybe the MTA is having technical difficulties again (it would not be the first time) but she frowns, glancing around for the other people that she knows were here beforehand. It’s not like a service could have pulled in without her noticing – she wasn’t _that_ spaced out – and whisked them away, so maybe they just decided to get where they were going somewhere else, or – whatever. Nonetheless, she is now very much alone on the platform, and it’s an eerie feeling. No matter the number of people who might be going by overhead, to either side, all around, it’s just her. Her breath billows silver. It seems cold. Colder.

“Hello?” Karen calls determinedly. “Hello, is someone there?”

There’s nothing, except the pop and buzz of a light that needs replacing. It gutters off briefly, comes back, then goes out again. The shadows at the mouth of the tunnel seem particularly dark, inklike and impenetrable. She strains for any sight of a headlight. It should be coming by now.

When Karen turns around again, the creature is right behind her.

She doesn’t scream – if only because it gets choked in her throat, she’s too much in shock to get a proper lungful of air, and instinct kicks in for her to rip her bag off and deal it an almighty whack upside the not-head. It lets out a hoarse screech and springs backward, seems briefly to become a shadow on the wall, then leaps back into physical existence in the next instant. It’s impossible to say what it is – she thinks luridly of Foggy asking if gremlins ate the stapler, if there’s some kind of low-level, pestilential demon that haunts places like this late at night, familiar as rats to the seasoned New Yorker. Oh God, nobody told her about subway monsters – perverts who might try to grope her in a crowded car, sure, but that’s different. What the _hell._

Karen has only a sense of something faceless, cold and devouring and hungry, as she swings her bag at the indistinct knot of darkness again. She hears chittering like a spider’s mandibles, realizes that there’s another one behind her, and tries to punch it. Her fist goes through murky nothingness, she feels an intense sensation of paralysis, and drops half to her knees, clutching at her numb arm. More of these things are swirling down the stairs, drawn to the awareness of easy prey, and the light goes out completely. She’s alone, oh Jesus, she’s lost, she’s drowning, they have her and now they are going to eat her bite by bite, the way the beasts always do. That, or –

Karen doesn’t know what exactly happens, mostly because she currently can’t fucking see. But then there’s a blast of air that she thinks is from a train but isn’t, the light suddenly flares back to life, the shadows flee, and the tilted, tangled, too-thin world plunges back into its usual parameters and settles shakily on its feet once more. Her ears pop hard enough to hurt, like she’s coming up from a deep dive or a long flight, and she rubs her eyes, seeing spots. The beasts, whatever they were, are gone. As fast as the nightmare started, it’s over. She sucks down a shaky breath, picks up her fallen bag, and –

Frank Castle (is that his name? _Frank Castle?)_ is standing on the far end of the platform.

Somehow, the fact that he should indeed be there isn’t as ridiculous to Karen as it might otherwise be, given the way this day (and night) has already managed to progress. She is damn sure he wasn’t there twenty seconds beforehand, but she’s almost glad to see him, the way he strides forward with that calculating, commanding air, stops, and looks her over from head to toe. Then he says, “Well, that was stupid.”

Karen doesn’t remotely have the breath to ask what he means, what happened, or any of it. She makes a move toward the exit; she is just going to get a goddamn taxi. “I’ll – I’ll be – ”

“Wouldn’t advise it,” Frank says tersely. “Not if those bastards were after you.”

“And ‘those bastards’ are – what, exactly?” Karen is aware that she’s opening a dangerous door, and bites her tongue on the words before they’re all the way out. “Friends of yours?”

“They look like fuckin’ friends of mine?” Frank seems incredulous that even someone as untutored as she is in the secrets of New York’s shadow realm could ask such a stupid question. “No. Those were Fisk’s.”

Karen opens her mouth again, he gives her a very sharp look, and she shuts it hard enough to hear her teeth click. He seems to be debating something, frowns and mutters, and then abruptly comes to an executive decision. He jerks his head. “You should come with me.”

“Are you – ” Karen stares at him. “Are you _kidnapping_ me?”

“Believe me, you would not be asking that question if I was.” He steps forward and – for the first time – actually touches her, in that he grabs her upper arm. His hands are cold but solid, he’s definitely not a ghost, and Karen is tempted to point out that this does in fact look like the prelude to bundling her off in the trunk of a car. Her brain tells her to pull away, but it gets lost somewhere in translation, and she doesn’t. Where is he taking her? You absolutely should not go anywhere with a strange man who has committed thirty-seven murders, no matter what eldritch fiends he’s just saved you from. If she disappears, Foggy and Matt will look into it, right?

At that, Frank belatedly seems to realize that he’s scaring her, and lets go of her arm, slowly raising both hands as if to indicate that he’s unarmed. Karen remains tense, trembling, as he walks to the edge of the platform and makes a brief, short gesture. It looks like he’s absently swatting at a fly, and she has no idea what he intends to achieve by it. She has no idea about anything about him, so that seems legit. Maybe she can sneak out while he’s occupied, or –

Just then, for the who-knows-how-many-th time that evening, Karen is totally distracted by something batshit happening. In this case, it’s the fact that shining black water is rising steadily through the subway tracks – she waits for it to hit the third rail and for there to be some kind of massive short, but it doesn’t come – and in the next instant, the space between the northbound and southbound platforms has been transformed into a featureless dark river, smooth as glass. Maybe there’s a water main break, she thinks. Maybe there was suddenly a major storm. But she knows there wasn’t. Frank called the water, somehow, and it belongs to him. There’s something else, something emerging from the tunnel, but it’s definitely not a train. It’s a boat.

Frank does that little wave again, and the boat bobs up like an arriving subway car. He steps down into it, it doesn’t rock at all, and then he reaches back for her. Seems to expect that she is in fact going to get into it after him, for whatever insane reason. Karen is this close to taking her chances with shadow monsters and Fisk, whatever he (it?) is, rather than sail down a flooded subway tunnel with a violent lunatic. Every rational impulse should tell her to get out of here, and on some level, it does. And yet. And yet.

She hesitates an instant more, another. Then she reaches down and takes Frank Castle’s hand. Steps into the boat with him, and so, for the first time, passes into the underworld.

 

**III.**

It’s – well, time isn’t working the way it usually does, there’s no way to know, but it doesn’t seem like very long – later when the boat glides out of the tunnel and up to something that looks a bit like when you’re coming into Grand Central on the Metro-North: a dim, empty underground railyard that spreads eerily off into the darkness, supported by rusting iron pillars and crisscrossed with mossy tracks. The air is still and silent, heavy and wet, and as they bump up against some sort of makeshift pier and step out, Karen is on high alert. Why would he bring her down here to this uber-creepy subterranean hideout if not to chop her up, or chain her up, or something else that crazy guys do to women they’ve captured? She stands stiffly, ready to run at any moment, though she isn’t sure how far she’d get, or where. This is his kingdom. Whatever goes on beneath the streets of New York, in the old tunnels, he is its master.

Frank, for his part, seems conscious that this looks (no shit) awfully sketchy. He glances at her, clears his throat, then away, just as the dog comes galloping up, panting happily, delighted to see its master. He scratches its ears, Karen flinches when it turns to her, but instead of tearing her throat out, it docilely licks her hands. She remembers that you should try to establish trust and connection with your kidnapper, make them see you as a person. “So, uh, what’s his name?”

“Spot.” Frank’s mouth twists wryly. “I didn’t pick it.”

“Spot?” Karen was thinking _Bruiser,_ or _Mauler,_ or something else of a violent nature. “What do you mean, you didn’t pick it? Did you adopt him?”

“Something like that. Came with the place.” Frank waves a hand at their gloomy surroundings. “I’d offer you something to drink, but I don’t think I really have anything.”

“Do you live down here?” Karen was thinking he was shacked up under a bridge, so this isn’t too far off, but still. “It’s horrible. What happened?”

Frank glances away. “Long story. C’mon.”

Since he does not seem likely to launch a massacre, at least against her, Karen ventures tentatively after him. She still isn’t sure exactly where this is. She has, after all, never sailed down a flooded subway tunnel into the realm of a grumpy and reclusive ex-Marine with a dog named Spot. Frank leads the way across the tracks, and into a smaller room that feels more like a living space. There are cupboards, a chair and table, and a camp cot in the corner spread with an old army-issue blanket and pillow. Maybe he’s an off-the-gridder, though you’d think he’d be living up in remote backwoods Maine with a bunker full of apocalypse preparations and a lot of automatic weapons. Remembering his reputation, Karen looks around, but if he has those, they’ve been hidden carefully. At his nod, she sinks into the chair. God, this is weird.

“Keep you down here until I’m sure Fisk has pissed off,” Frank says, in what he apparently thinks is an explanation. “Probably be home by tomorrow morning, though.”

“Thanks.” Karen pauses. “I think.”

Frank opens the cupboards, then shakes his head. “Yeah. Got nothing. Sorry.”

“What do you eat, then? And/or drink?” Karen figures it has to be some kind of superfood, if he’s a century-something old and still looks like he’s in his late thirties. “The blood and tears of your enemies?”

Frank utters a short, startled laugh. He doesn’t, however, immediately answer, digging around, until he finally finds an old can of Folger’s. This seems to do the trick, as he spoons it into two chipped mugs, pours hot water in (did he have a kettle? Where did he get it from?) and stirs it. “Black coffee,” he says. “One thing I couldn’t do without.”

“Sure. Fine.” Karen accepts the mug when he passes it to her. The damp and chill is settling in her lungs, she’s shivering, and it does look hot. She just watched him make it, she’s pretty sure he hasn’t drugged it, but she waits until he takes a sip before she does. They sit there in increasingly awkward silence, until she can’t hold back any longer. “What the fuck is this place? And who the fuck are you? Exactly?”

“It’s – ” Frank considers that, eyeing her over the rim of his mug. “Let’s just say I’m keeping you out of the way of something a lot goddamn worse than me.”

“Fisk?” Karen thinks the name might be somewhat familiar, but she can’t think why. “Why would you do that?”

“Complicated.” Frank, she gets the feeling, is not a man for small talk, and possibly hasn’t had company in very, very many years. He drinks more coffee, and scratches Spot’s ears when the dog comes padding up. “Since you saw me, that made it more so.”

Karen stares at him, trying to decide any way to ask this question without sounding insane, and then accepts that the insanity threshold has long since passed. “Are you Frank Castle? Lieutenant Frank Castle, from World War II?”

Something on his face flickers, though it’s hard to say what. After a long pause he says, entirely matter-of-factly, “Yeah.”

“That’s…” Karen doesn’t want to say what is or isn’t possible, as she’s learned the hard way that the world is dark and strange and wild. “How?”

“You been looking into me?” Frank regards her with hooded eyes, once more almost black, intent and unblinking as a hunter’s. “What do you think you know?”

“Not much.” Karen forces herself not to turn away, to hold his gaze. “You were born in 1910, supposedly. Enlisted in 1928. Served in the Pacific during WWII, came home and – well, you went a little crazy. I don’t know the details, but someone killed your family, and it looks like you – you took revenge.”

Frank’s jaw clenches, his hand knotting into a fist where it rests on his thigh. No matter how old this wound is, it is clearly far from healed. “Yeah,” he grunts at last. “Yeah, they goddamn well killed my family. So I did the same.”

“But you’re – ” Karen waves a hand, a little helplessly. “That was in 1948. _Nineteen-forty-eight._ Seventy years ago.”

Frank shrugs, taking another slug of coffee. “So?”

“So what – ” She steadies herself. Asking these kinds of questions to these kinds of people – things – doesn’t always turn out well. “What are you?”

“I have a job,” Frank says at last. “I’ve had it for a while. Not worth saying how I got it, but… guess they figured I was the right asshole for it. Maybe I had karma to pay back, who knows. People who die in New York, I deal with them. They all come here, good people, shit people, everyone. They pass through here on the way to wherever they’re going next. Usually they come in on the river, but sometimes I go out and get them. My job to send ‘em to wherever they need to ultimately end up, reward or punishment. So.” He shrugs again. “That’s it, pretty much.”

“I’m sorry. You – ” Karen reaches for her arm, pinches herself, and doesn’t wake up. “You’re – wait. What. You’re the _Grim Reaper?”_

“Nah.” Frank shakes his head. “More like the lord of the dead. Not the first one, and like I said, only for New York. They sent me some dick from Jersey once, got to tell ‘em it still didn’t count.” He finishes off his coffee and puts it down. “Yeah, so that’s it.”

Karen’s mouth is still open, and she doesn’t foresee closing it any time soon. Even as some part of her is insisting he’s just a delusional vet with severe PTSD who has concocted an elaborate fantasy story as a coping mechanism, she thinks of where she’s seen him: where the businessman had the scaffolding fall on his head, and after Mr. O’Reilly had a heart attack. _In case I was needed. It’s my goddamn job, unfortunately._ If either of those men were going to kick the bucket, it would be Frank’s responsibility (if she’s following this, if this is real) to sort out their final destination in the afterlife. He can’t sit down here by himself all the time, with only Spot for company, just waiting for the boats with the souls of the dearly departed to sail in. He’d go crazy with boredom. So he must sometimes go out and wander around New York, unseen by most people except for her. Whoever’s dying that day, he can swing by in person and pick them up.

“Am I…” Karen can’t breathe, and that makes her next question seem suddenly, terribly possible. “Am _I_ dead?”

“Nah,” Frank says again. “You’re alive. Not many people come down here like that. Like I said. Temporary.”

Karen is still trying to wrap her head around the part where she inadvertently befriended (? No, that seems like entirely the wrong word here) the physical manifestation of death in the city. Whether or not Frank is the one who has to cut their lifeline (or was that the Fates? She struggles to recall the Greek mythology book she read in high school, since it sounds like he’s some kind of Hades) or is just there to receive their soul, he must have seen New York in a way no one ever has, the moment where the city that never sleeps finally does. Was he there on 9/11, moving unseen through the rubble and the broken beams, lifting up souls like scraps of silk from the remnants of their bodies, untouched by the dust that blanketed everything else? All the teenagers who drink too much at college parties and can’t be woken, the senior citizens dying comfortably in St. Luke’s or Metro-General with their families around them, the gangbangers shot in back alleys, the kids stabbed in the projects, the drunks who fall into the harbor or onto the subway tracks, the celebrities overdosing in Fifth Avenue penthouses, overworked investment bankers putting guns to their heads, the young parents who wither away from cancer at a too-early age, the fluke accidents like choking on a hot dog at the summer barbecue or having a coronary because the Jets screwed the pooch again or any of the thousand and other ways in which people die in New York, the way they do everywhere – has Frank seen all of those? He said he had karma to pay back. A man who killed so many people in life, forced to guide them in their death. His own purgatory, perhaps. His own reckoning. An endless, echoing, impossible loneliness.

Karen doesn’t know what she can possibly say. Her throat is tight. No wonder Frank doesn’t talk to anyone, isn’t used to company. The last thing you want is to befriend anyone, when you know that one day, you’re going to have to watch them die, take them here, and send them wherever they go. Yet for some reason, he did talk to her. Noticed her, made an effort to save her from whatever creatures were after her tonight. She doesn’t know why and doesn’t want to ask. But if it’s easier to keep the entire city as a faceless sea of strangers, he’s broken that rule. Why?

Of course, Karen still isn’t completely sure that she believes any of this, but for his part, Frank doesn’t seem to give a damn whether she does or not, and is going to expend absolutely no energy on convincing her otherwise if she challenges him. He doesn’t need her to buy into his delusion (if that is what it is) and doesn’t care if it sounds insane. Karen has to admit, she isn’t sure why anyone would otherwise live down here alone except for a dog, and yes, she’s had a sense from the start that he is far from simple, or safe, or ordinary. He _could_ be the Lord of the Dead, Big Apple style. It’s as likely an explanation as anything.

She finishes the rest of her coffee in awkward silence. It doesn’t seem quite as cold and dank, or maybe she’s just getting used to it. Then she clears her throat. “So, what am I doing? Just – staying over, or something?”

Frank looks startled at the idea that he would bring a woman home and she then might expect to have somewhere to sleep. Then he tilts his head at the cot. “If you want. I’m going to go check on something. Stay here.”

Karen does not have any inclination whatsoever to go wandering alone around the underworld, thanks very much. She wonders if she should ask what he is looking into, but thinks she probably doesn’t. So she goes over to the cot and climbs gingerly onto it, drawing her knees up, as Frank whistles to Spot (really? Is that actually his name?) and pulls up his sweatshirt hood. They vanish out into the maze of dim underground passages, and Karen is suddenly and entirely alone. This might look like somewhere under New York, but she’s pretty sure she is no longer there.

Shivering, she lies down on the cot, tugging the blanket up. It’s clear that Frank does not have the same requirements of food and sleep as a regular human, but the habits are hard to break, and he might enjoy doing it at times even if it’s not necessary. It’s hard for Karen to close her eyes for too long, since she’s inclined to open them with a start at any small noise, but it’s been a long day, and the exhaustion is creeping up. Frank doesn’t look like he’s going to be back any time soon, and odd as it seems, she really doesn’t think he’s going to hurt her.

And so, finally, she sleeps.

 

**IV.**

Karen wakes up the next morning with a sense of brief and total dislocation and confusion. She doesn’t know why she’s still in her clothes, she doesn’t know why she smells faintly like a sewer, and why she’s lying on her own bed, her bag set on the floor next to her, and why she thought for a second that she should be somewhere else. She pushes herself upright, blinking, and stares around her room. Everything looks ordinary. She’s home. Yes, she looks and feels like she apparently had the hell of a night, but why would that be –

Oh God. She freezes as memory hits. Frank, the beasts in the subway, the boat, the dark water, the spooky subterranean warren, and his completely up-front admission to being the New York-branch president of the underworld. Not in any metaphorical sense, either. She has to check that she is in fact warm and breathing and has a pulse, that she is alive and intact as promised, and it seems that she is. So she just spent some portion of the night in the land of the dead, and now she’s back among the living. Good to know he’s honest, at least? Jesus Christ.

Karen sits up slowly, brushes herself off – it doesn’t look like it was just a dream, much as she dearly wants to think it was – and heads into the bathroom and has a quick shower before she has to head to work. There is still a whiff of eau de drowned rat about her as she locks the door and takes the stairs, having to double-check everything, ascertain that reality is back to normal, that she will step out onto a busy street and not a featureless black void. But it’s working as it’s supposed to. That happened. It, possibly, will continue to happen. Who knows.

Both Matt and Foggy are at the office when she arrives, and both of them are surprised to see her looking, to put it charitably, in a state. Karen holds off on telling them the full story, for obvious reasons, but finally she just needs someone else to perform a sanity check, and confesses that she was attacked in the subway last night by… something, and saved by a man named Frank, who told her a strange story. She doesn’t think it needs to go into more detail than that, even if her friends are understandably looking very concerned. “I know how it sounds,” she finishes up, “but maybe if I ask if Frank Castle ever – ”

“Frank _Castle?”_ Foggy rears back. “Wait, I know that name. He was some super crazy serial killer guy in like, the forties. A scary story. Don’t stay out too late with your friends or he’ll get you, hook for a hand, attacks you in lovers’ lane, whatever. The boogeyman. He was real, I know that much, but – honestly, Karen, I hope this is a no-more-turkey-sandwiches-before-bed situation. If you – if he’s somehow still out there – ”

“He was a murderer, yes.” Matt has caught onto that element as well, and does not seem inclined to let go. “Frank Castle was an unrepentant mass murderer, Karen, and nobody knows what happened to him. If that actually was him you met, you need to make sure you never do again.”

Karen doesn’t answer. It’s clear that neither Matt nor Foggy are immediately discounting the possibility that this really happened, or that Frank could in fact have spent seventy ageless years as the local Lord of the Dead, and neither of them look all that happy about it. Finally she says, very carefully, “Is there… something like this in New York that I should know about? In terms of strange things?”

“There are a lot of assholes in funny costumes who run around and cause hassle for the rest of us, sure,” Foggy says. “Not out of the question that they have real powers. But these people, they – ”

“They help us,” Matt interjects. “They stand between us and whatever’s out there that’s worse. We need them.”

Foggy gives him a funny look. “How would you know that?”

“We just do,” Matt says – to Karen’s ears, slightly evasively. “If this really is Frank Castle, whatever he thinks he’s doing, then he’s one of the entities that we need to guard against. People like the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, they need to step up and – ”

“Frank said there were worse things than him,” Karen interrupts, remembering. “Something about someone named Fisk.”

“Wait.” Matt does a double take. _“Wilson_ Fisk?”

Both Foggy and Karen stare at him in befuddlement, and he hurries to explain himself. “I mean – who hasn’t heard of him? He’s a major kingpin and a mob boss, he has fingers in half the dirty pies in New York. Obviously he isn’t a saint, but that doesn’t mean Castle is – ”

“That’s not what he meant, I don’t think,” Karen breaks in again. “I’m not sure, but it was like he was hinting that Fisk was… was a demon. An actual one. Something way worse than a regular criminal, and much more dangerous.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Foggy holds up both hands. “First we were talking about some inexplicably and possibly undead serial killer who lives in a derelict underground trainyard with a dog, and now we’re onto mob bosses who may secretly be Beelzebub? Can I least get another coffee and my tinfoil hat before we go totally off the ranch? Jesus, you two.”

“That’s why we need people like Daredevil,” Matt insists. “We don’t know what’s out there and what they could do. If we’re in danger – ”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Foggy says. “If this shit about Castle and Fisk is remotely true, it sounds like we’ve got a few too many devils in this city to start with.”

Matt snaps his mouth shut, looks as if he’s taking this oddly personally, and Karen struggles with the impulse to speak up in Frank’s defense again. It’s true that he didn’t kill her or try to hurt her, though that admittedly is the very, very lowest bar for a successful interaction, and she could still, of course, be wrong. But somehow, she doesn’t think she is. No matter who – or what – Frank Castle really is, he’s a broken, lonely, angry, sad man, a man who has not had meaningful human interaction in years and for whom any attempt to have it may just make the heartbreak worse. Karen doesn’t think it’s remotely fair for anyone to have to live that way, undead or otherwise, and it makes her angry too. Whoever did this to him, whoever pronounced this sentence, it’s wrong, it’s wrong. Frank shouldn’t have to suffer this way. He’s suffered enough.

“If you see him,” Matt’s saying, “Karen, if you see Castle again, I want to know about it, all right? Whoever this person is, if it’s him or not, he’s dangerous.”

“And what are you going to do?" Foggy asks. "Avocado him to death?”

“Just tell me,” Matt says. “All right?”

“Sure,” Karen says automatically, though she’s already, internally, not entirely certain. The wise thing to do, the clear, sensible, unambiguously not-stupid thing to do is to drop it. Case closed. A weird experience she had one night, the sort of story that every New Yorker might have. No need to embroil herself further in this mire. None whatsoever.

(And yet.)

To say the least, Mitchell Ellison, editor-in-chief at the _New York Bulletin,_ is surprised when Karen turns up at his office the next morning with his article from a few years ago tucked under her arm, and wants to talk about its most notorious subject. He’s a middle-aged guy, glasses and sweater vest and salt-and-pepper beard, who probably has a favorite gourmet coffee roaster in Brooklyn and actually reads the _New Yorker_ instead of just pretending to in order to look cool, and he is currently under the impression that she’s a Columbia graduate student doing a research project on cases similar to the Castle one. He has already tried most of the avenues that she was thinking about: Freedom of Information request, scouring the local archives, old case reports, though of course for him, it’s just a matter of interesting public history. “People weren’t too pleased that I ran that article on Veterans’ Day,” he says, having agreed to meet her for ten minutes, and it’s now an hour later. “Big kerfuffle about me apparently disrespecting the troops by pointing out that Castle was a Marine vet and also a killer. Felt that I should have said something a lot more simplistically red-white-and-blue.”

“So this is a story that people know?” Karen presses. “About who Frank Castle was?”

“Some of them.” Ellison cocks his head. “Why is he so important to you?”

“It’s just… a very complicated story, isn’t it? And if there’s more, if the record needs to be set straight, then it’s something the public deserves to know.”

“Well, he’s been dead for seventy years, so it’s not like he has a name to clear.” Ellison absently untwists a paper clip. “Though sure, if new evidence comes to light, we’d have to consider it. He doesn’t have any living relatives, though while I was researching the article, I found someone who had served with him in the Pacific. I think he’s still alive. His name’s Hoyle, Curtis Hoyle, he lives in a nursing home in the Bronx. If you’re really interested, I could give you the address.”

Karen tries not to sound too eager as she agrees that that would be great, thanks, and Ellison scribbles it down on a Post-It note. They talk for about fifteen more minutes, he can’t really tell her much else apart from what’s already been published, and Karen thanks him and takes the note. Then she heads to the subway stop, looks around carefully (no murderous shadow demons this time) and gets on the train bound for Van Cortlandt Park. Hoyle lives somewhere in the 170s, about a dozen blocks from Yankee Stadium.

Karen gets off at 168th in Washington Heights, emerges from underground, and walks the few minutes up to Hoyle’s nursing home, a pleasant brown-brick building with a door that, when she knocks on it, is answered by an equally pleasant young caretaker in scrubs. He is somewhat surprised to hear that she’s here to visit Mr. Hoyle, who apparently no longer gets many visitors either, but offers to go and see if he’s awake. Karen waits in the reception area, painted in attractive pastel colors, until the caretaker returns and says that she can go up. Room 308, remember not to upset him, be patient if he can’t answer questions. The usual.

Karen thanks him, promises that she’ll behave herself, and hurries upstairs, marking off doors until she reaches 308. She knocks, waits for an answer, and when it comes, carefully lets herself inside. She has no idea what to expect, or if this likewise was a good idea, but it’s much too late for that now.

The room, like the reception area, is painted in pastels, and it has a big south-facing window that gazes out to the New York streets. Curtis Hoyle, as she assumes he must be, is sitting in a chair near it. He’s probably at least ninety, but still strong and sound-minded, African-American, missing his left leg, who sits as ramrod-straight as if he’s expecting to be called to inspection. They eye each other up and down. Then he says, “You must be Miss Page.”

“Yes. Hi.” Karen holds out her hand, and he shakes it. “I’m sorry for the unexpected visit. Mitchell Ellison gave me your address?”

“Did he?” Hoyle continues to smile politely, but something changes in his eyes, even as it’s hard to tell what. “I spoke to Mr. Ellison a few years ago, yes. What did you want with me?”

“I…” Karen debates whether she should say this to an old man who doesn’t need the shock, but Ellison must have asked him something similar. “I was told you served with Frank Castle.”

“Ah.” Hoyle looks as if he thought that might be coming. He pauses, then tilts his head at the other chair, and Karen sinks into it, smoothing her skirt. Curtis weighs his words, then says, “Yes. We were in the same squadron for four years in the Pacific. He was the best damn Marine I ever fought with, and a good man. So if you’re here to ask more gossipy questions about what he supposedly turned into, I’m not going to sit and spread dirt on – ”

“Mr. Hoyle, that’s… that’s really not what I’m interested in.” Karen debates a final moment more, hopes this isn’t a terrible mistake, and then can’t hold back. “This is going to sound completely ludicrous, I know, but I think I – I think I met him.”

She’s praying this doesn’t startle the poor man to death, but if she was expecting a big reaction or drop-jawed shock or insistence that she must be mistaken, none of that comes. Once again, something shifts over Curtis’s face, too subtle to make out exactly, and he leans back in his chair, steepling his fingers and looking at the ceiling. Then he says only, “You think you met Frank.”

“Yes. I realize it was a long time ago and he maybe should be – you know, not around, but I don’t think I’m wrong. He said that was who he is, and he looks just like the picture. I believe him, by the way. I wasn’t sure at first, and I don’t know how it would have happened, but I do. I just… I suppose I was wondering if you knew.”

Curtis’s jaw works briefly, but he still doesn’t answer. Karen can’t tell if he resents her for digging this up again, if he doesn’t want to believe it, or if, perhaps, he’s somehow known all along. Finally Curtis says, “Where do you think you met him?”

Karen explains their first encounter in Times Square, the subsequent one outside her apartment, and then Frank saving her from the subway ghouls and taking her to his gloomy cave with Spot the dog. At that, Curtis lets out a brief, short laugh, and when Karen looks at him in confusion, he says, “Sure, I guess that would be Spot. The word _k̑érberos,_ where they think you get the name Cerberus from, it means ‘spotted’. Learned that once. Still amuses me.”

“Wh – ” Karen stares at him. She has, obviously, not mentioned any of the Hades/Lord of the New York Dead/underworld stuff, and she doesn’t know that she was prepared for this to arise directly. Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guards the gates of the underworld – if Frank is serving as its present custodian, then yes, as he said, the dog would come with the job. This current version seems more interested in licking hands than tearing out throats, though who knows, maybe he’s terrifying to sinners. Still, if Curtis is mentioning this, then –

“You know,” she says. “You know that Frank is alive, and who – _what –_ he’s supposed to be. What he _is._ Don’t you.”

There’s a long pause as they look at each other. Then Curtis nods once. “Yes,” he says, no more, no less. “I know.”

Karen blows out a ragged breath. While on some level it’s comforting to hear that she didn’t have a total psychotic break, that means she did in fact meet the goddamn Lord of the Dead, and that is obviously not the cheeriest piece of information in the world. “How long have you…?”

“That’s my business, and Frank’s.” Curtis is still polite, but absolutely impenetrable, and Karen can already tell that no good is going to come of pushing him on this. “I can confirm that he’s who he says he is. I can’t tell you anything else, Miss Page. I’m sorry.”

“All right.” Karen can respect that he’s willing to keep his friend’s secrets until the end, even as it twists something suddenly and poignantly into her heart, knowing in what form that end must come, and that Frank and Curtis must both know it too. She gets to her feet. “I’ll get going, Mr. Hoyle. Thank you for talking to me.”

He inclines his head, but doesn’t quite take his eyes off her, as if to say that he hopes she won’t give him any reason to regret it. Karen heads out of the nursing home and back to the street. She can get the 4 from 170th and take it back to 51st, and hope that’s enough time to come to terms with what has just been confirmed for her. Frank himself might have been lying, but she already instinctively believed him, she definitely doesn’t think Curtis is, and that means –

She’s gotten only a few blocks when a large black car with tinted windows rolls up in the street next to her, and the window purrs down. “Excuse me,” a voice calls. “Excuse me? Miss Page?”

Startled, Karen whips around, and lays eyes on a man in an expensively tailored suit, wearing mirrored sunglasses despite the fact that it’s a cold, murky day. The car has come to a halt by the curb, and he’s leaning out in an expectant manner, as she hesitates, then stops. “Yes?”

“We were hoping to speak to you for a moment,” the consigliere – as she’s fairly sure he is – goes on, with that silky, apologetic, sorry-to-cause-you-trouble tone that tends to be the carrot before the stick. “It shouldn’t take long. If you could possibly just – ?”

“I’m all right, thanks.” Karen aims a demure, closed-mouth, you-keep-your-distance smile at him. Whatever trees she’s shaken, things now appear to be falling out rather quickly, and she reaches instinctively for her purse, for the weight of the gun inside. “If you’d just – ”

“Don’t resist, Miss Page,” another voice says, a booming, unctuous, consciously self-important sort of voice, like he’s trying to give a dramatic monologue in a single spotlight every time he speaks. “We don’t want any unpleasantness. That would be regrettable.”

Karen tenses, just as the source of the voice leans into sight through the window. He too is wearing reflective sunglasses, and he’s clearly lost faith in his underling to convey the gravity of the situation. He’s a big man, tall and broad and bald, with lapels sharply creased and handkerchief tucked in the breast pocket of the jacket, and something about him sends a reflexive shudder down Karen’s back. Especially when he removes the sunglasses to look at her, and she’s sure that for half an instant, his eyes are solid, burning, blood-red. They’re not any less frightening when they’re not. He smiles, which looks waxen, unconvincing, an expression he’s badly mimicking and has never actually meant. “Miss Page,” he says. “I’m Wilson Fisk.”

“Oh?” Her heart is pounding hard and short in her throat, but she forces her own lips back over her teeth, trying to match a predator’s display. “Is that so?”

“Indeed.” He beckons magisterially. “Get in the car.”

Karen stalls, trying to think how to refuse one more time without this getting messy. She takes a step backward, then another, and the car door jerks open, like several large men (or not men – she tastes a distinct whiff of sulfur on the air) are about to come piling out of it after her. They, however, never get the chance. That is because at that moment, a shadow falls over them from nowhere, and Karen briefly and legitimately thinks they have been hit by an entire battalion, a building has collapsed, a bomb has gone off, or something else huge and terrifying. That is the effect, in other words, of Frank Castle bursting in out of goddamn nowhere and totally losing his shit.

Everything turns to madness almost immediately. Karen gets caught in a concussive shockwave and knocked down, scraping her palms on the cement. She can’t see exactly what’s going on by the car, but there’s a whirling dervish of pure blackness that could be generated by either one of the combatants. She isn’t even sure how she knows that it’s Frank, other than that she just does, and the next instant, as the shadow parts, she gets a good look and is no longer in any doubt. There are clearly rules about him interacting with regular humans; he can’t kill them or have any influence on their lives, he just collects their souls when they’re dead and sees to it that they pay whatever piper they owe. But if Fisk is in fact a powerful demon, the rules of combat change. Frank is evidently at liberty to beat the shit out of him, by whatever arcane and sorcerous methods he has at his disposal, and intends to do exactly that.

Karen ducks as another blast of superheated air scours overhead, and a chip of broken glass stings her cheek. She crawls on hands and knees toward her bag, almost blinded, and decides that Frank really doesn’t need any help with this one. She’s almost reached it when there’s another boom and she rolls out of the way just as the car door blows off, landing with a clatter of twisted metal exactly where she was a second ago. She can hear Fisk bellowing orders to his flunkeys (under-demons?), and as she risks a split-second glance over her shoulder, she sees Frank dispense with all other methods of problem-solving, and just punch the fat bald bastard square in the face. There’s a crunch of breaking cartilage, Fisk snarls, and keeps snarling, as the flesh peels back from his lips and there are far too many teeth and he bears only incidental resemblance to something, anything human.

Karen jerks her head away, with the sense that if she keeps looking, it’ll damage her in a way she can’t take back. Whatever is going to happen next, whatever immortal heavyweight slugfest is about to go down, it’s better if she is far away from here. And so, wondering in despair how she ever thought New York was ordinary, safe, non-magical, any of it, that is exactly what she does.

 

**V.**

“Jesus _Christ,_ Karen,” Foggy says, shaking his head. “You were in the _middle_ of whatever ridiculous shit that was yesterday? We heard there was a gas main explosion, not what you’re saying this actually – Jesus.”

“I’m sorry.” Karen doesn’t know why she’s apologizing, if she is, or why she should, but she is aware that poor Foggy has a tough life and needs better friends, with whatever it is that Matt does and now her getting in on the fun too. “I’m still getting my head around it too.”

“So Frank Castle actually is alive, he’s the psycho who lives in a sewer like Pennywise the Clown, and now he’s blowing up demon mob bosses in Washington Heights. _Terrific._ ” Foggy throws his hands in the air. “Were you planning to mention this, that you went to visit some old army buddy of Castle’s and he confirmed super casually that he’s the Lord of the Dead, or was that not important? Are we sure this Curtis Hoyle guy isn’t part of it?”

“He’s at least ninety years old and he has one leg, I’m pretty sure his active ass-kicking days are behind him.” Karen feels obliged to defend him, if Frank has put this much trust in him to keep this secret for decades and to all appearances, that’s exactly what Curtis has done. “And he said that Frank was a good man, the best he served with. Whatever he is, he’s not a psycho. I think he was there to protect me. From – from Fisk.”

Foggy gives her the squiggliest of squiggly eyes, but can’t think how to answer, and Karen herself is left to consider the implications of having some kind of chthonic chaos deity apparently at hand to defend her honor – violently, if necessary. She didn’t realize she made that much of an impression on Frank, though it could just be that he hates Fisk and wants him to get fucked, and thus would have turned up whether or not she was there. Striving to change the subject, she glances around. “Where’s Matt?”

“Who the hell knows where Matt is, ever?” Foggy raises his eyes to the heavens. “I’m just his best friend and his business partner, why would I do anything insane like expecting him to communicate with me? That might be more of a miracle than us ever getting paid.”

Karen supposes this is true, even as she hopes that Matt hasn’t, quote unquote, walked into any more walls. She and Foggy start work on the morning’s in-tray, at least until the door opens and Matt walks in, cane tapping. At the sight of him, both Foggy and Karen start up with sounds of alarm, and he raises a hand. “I promise, it’s fine. Not as bad as it looks.”

“How do you know how it _looks_?” Foggy points out, accurately if perhaps somewhat insensitively. “Did you stand in front of a mirror and fuckin’ echolocate the giant-ass bruise on your face?”

Matt gives him a cutting stare, and Foggy clearly regrets all the life choices he has ever made. Matt does not seem inclined to offer details, as usual, and seats himself at his desk. He seems more messed up than the usual battle scars he comes in with, and she tries to repress a sudden, unfounded suspicion that he got really worked up about Frank Castle being alive and went out to find him himself. He wasn’t pleased about it the other day, after all, and Matt is far more capable than your average blind guy, but Karen doesn’t know that it’s a good idea to go picking fights. Especially with what’s just been confirmed about Frank’s capabilities, and she tries to think how to bring this up without sounding like she’s nagging. “Matt, you’d – you’d talk to us if there was anything we should know, right? We’re here for you, after all.”

“Yeah, Karen, I know.” He smiles at her, and she wants to feel reassured, but she can’t shake the feeling that she’s being shut out. “It’s all right, I just – had a disagreement with someone.”

“Hell of a disagreement, buddy.” Foggy cocks an eyebrow. “You know, we’re not idiots. Both of us, unlike you, have functional eyes in our heads. What’s going on?”

“Low blow.” Matt cocks an eyebrow back. “Just trust me, all right?”

“You know that’s not how trust works, right? You can’t just say whatever shit and expect us to never ask questions and believe everything’s fine, right?” Foggy bears down with a ferocious expression, as Matt in turn looks somewhat alarmed. “Especially when your face looks like it’s gone through a meat grinder. If you’re not going to tell us, fine, don’t tell us. But don’t act like we’re just making it up. Because we all know goddamn well we’re not.”

“Okay, okay.” Matt raises both hands in surrender. “Easy, pal. But you really don’t need to worry about it. I’ve got everything under control. I just want to make sure you’re both safe.”

“Sure, fine,” Foggy mutters. “But who’s doing that for you?”

Matt pretends he didn’t hear that, though Karen knows he probably would have heard it at a thousand yards, and the disagreement is solved in the totally adult fashion of ignoring it. This at least enables them to get through the rest of the day, and she leaves at six, while Foggy says he and Matt are going to stay late to get the remaining prep done for Mrs. Gonzalez’s suit, which starts the day after tomorrow. Karen suspects that this might be an excuse for Foggy to shake Matt down more privately, and wishes him good luck with that. She buttons her coat and steps out into the cold, misty night. It certainly looks appropriately atmospheric, and it’s just past Halloween – November second, All Souls, which seems portentous somehow, foreboding, now that she’s met the man in charge of them. Is this the night they get to be free, to go where they want, and he gets it off? No matter what, he leaves them alone until morning? Or maybe –

“Hey, Karen.”

The voice is quiet, rough, and she almost doesn’t hear it at first. Then it hits, she whirls around, and in that appear-from-nowhere fashion he has, there he is, leaning against a lamppost. With the night and the fog swirling around him, he looks more than half unreal, untethered, a little translucent around the edges, but still indubitably, indomitably solid. He glances at her almost shyly, as if not sure how she’ll take his appearance when the last iteration involved an exploding car, and coughs, as if compelled to explain himself. “I just, uh, I was in the neighborhood.”

“Were you?” Karen doesn’t know if she wants to ask why, not with what she now knows, if he decided there was someone worth coming to collect personally, rather than waiting for the boat. They stand awkwardly a few paces apart, looking at each other. He’s wearing a black beanie and he has the hood up on his sweatshirt, and his gaze flicks over her, up and down as if checking for any injuries, then away. She says, “What was that? The other day?”

“Look, I told you Fisk was nothing to mess around with, okay?” Frank seems agitated that she failed to grasp this essential point. “Just… be careful.”

“I didn’t go _looking_ for him,” Karen reminds him. “He came to me.”

“Yeah, but…” Frank takes a step. “Promise me, huh?”

Startled by his intensity, by how much this seems to matter to him, Karen nods, and a fraught silence hangs between them. Their eyes meet, and Karen notices (it seems foolish, almost shallow, but still) that for a guy a hundred-odd years old, he’s pretty good-looking. Not in a  callow young pretty-boy way, but something appealingly rugged, mature, rough-hewn, someone who has been through all the shit and grist that the world can throw at him and clawed his way out somehow. But she doesn’t even know if he technically counts as alive. She can’t exactly ask if he wants to get dinner in midtown sometime, and it claws at her heart in a peculiarly painful way, something she wasn’t expecting or prepared for. Why would they meet, why would she be the one of millions of people in New York who can see him, who knows he’s there and believes he isn’t what the black legend has made him, if there’s no point? He – what, goes back underground to his lonely realm and his dog, and she goes on with life pretending they never met, it never mattered? It doesn’t seem fair, that way. None of it does.

“So, uh,” Frank says, self-consciously clearing his throat. “You take care, Karen, huh?”

She looks back at him, not even sure what she wants to say, when (as is par for the course around him) something very strange happens. The world shifts, and the street fades out and turns obscured like breath on a cold windowpane, and suddenly she and Frank are both standing in a small bedroom – that, by the looks of things, belongs to a girl, maybe seven or eight and fond of princesses and ponies and Star Wars Legos, has a big picture of Selena Gomez and other teeny-pop idols on the wall, second-grade homework scrawled with glittery gel pen. Karen is still struggling to figure out how they got here and why they weren’t where they just were and why the world got pulled out from under them, but she can’t move; her feet are oddly locked in place. For his part, Frank has a sick, blanched, almost frantic look on his face, and he turns to her almost wildly. “Jesus. Get out of here.”

“What’s going on?” Karen demands. “What’s happening?”

“Just…” Frank rubs a hand over his chin, can’t find the words, swears under his breath. “You don’t want to see this, all right? You don’t want to see this.”

Before Karen can ask again – even as she suddenly and horribly thinks she knows – there’s someone else standing there with them. It looks like the owner of the room: she has a thick gingery ponytail and several missing teeth, a little kid, a goddamn _baby._ Karen’s not really the maternal type, but even she feels some sort of ancestral pang, some instinctive protectiveness, that she’d throw herself in front of a train to stop this, and her chest feels like ice. Frank and the little girl stare at each other. Then she says, “Who are you?”

“I’m – ” He thinks about that, this terrifying, hard-edged man, this remorseless gatherer of souls, and as Karen watches, he kneels down to make himself less large and terrifying, sits back on his heels and gives her a crooked smile. “Hey, sweetheart. I’m Frank.”

“I’m Izzy.” She doesn’t seem afraid of him, at least. She’s bright and charming and curious, she has so much left that she should do and see and become, and she should not, she should _not,_ be seeing him now. “What are you doing here, Frank?”

“Well.” He thinks about that. “You’re gonna have to come with me, sweetheart, huh? We’re going somewhere fun. Hey? We’re going somewhere fun.”

Izzy thinks about that. Karen is transfixed, her heart is breaking, she doesn’t know if Izzy sees her too and does not want to ask, to interrupt this, this dreadful and unbearable necessity. Frank said he isn’t the Grim Reaper, but in some sense, the job must be similar. If he goes out, if he leaves the underworld, he has a responsibility to be there when the time comes, and this –

(Distantly, Karen hears a woman screaming, and a man on the phone to 911, saying that his daughter is having a severe allergic reaction, there was some trace of peanut in the cake, the EpiPen isn’t working, they need to get here now, goddammit, _now –_ and yet, she knows in her bones that if Frank is here, it is already too late. Izzy – the name on her homework is Isabella Cohen – is not really standing here in the bedroom. Her body is in the kitchen, in what was supposed to be a party, and her mother is screaming, screaming, _screaming._ )

Karen presses her hand to her mouth, turns away, even as Izzy pauses, seems to remember something, turns back. “I don’t – ” she starts, and frowns, lower lip starting to quiver. “Frank, I’m – I’m scared.”

“I know.” His voice is rougher and lower than ever, and there are tears in his eyes as he holds out his hand. He seems to sense that she might have guessed what is happening to her, but as she tries to look back again, he reaches out and pulls her into his side almost ferociously, as if to shield her from one last scarring sight. “I got you, sweetheart. I got you.”

They take a step, and one more, and the bedroom is starting to fade in turn, and Izzy holds his hand tightly, as a white light begins to well up around them. The screams of Izzy’s mother, and the frantic pleading of her father, go silent, and then Frank and Karen and Izzy are all in a garden. It’s green and gold and buzzing and rich with life, and sunlight dapples the ground through shady trees, and Izzy glances around in shy interest. “Where are we?”

“You’re going to stay here, okay?” Frank seems to have immense difficulty speaking, but he manages it nonetheless. “Someone’s going to come and get you real soon, kid, and they’ll take you to a place where you’ll be safe and happy. That’s not so bad, right? Not so bad.”

Izzy blinks, looks around, and sees Karen for the first time. She seems surprised. “Are you Mrs. Frank?”

“Am I – ” Karen is obviously startled, but she also doesn’t know if she remotely has it in her to disillusion this child, this departed soul. “All right,” she says. “Sure, yeah.”

She can sense Frank looking at her, but he likewise does not correct her, and they wait in the garden – time once more has done that thing where it contains no reference to itself – until, as promised, someone comes to get Izzy. Karen can’t look directly at them, and can’t remember what she did see when she looks away, but she has a sensation of brightness and benevolence, of peace, and it washes over her bruised soul like a healing balm. Izzy hugs Frank quickly – then, to Karen’s vast startlement, her too – and Frank squeezes her shoulder hard. “Go on,” he says. “Go on, it’s okay. It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay.”

Izzy is still a little tentative, is inclined to stay close, and it takes both Frank and Karen a bit of persuading to make her let go. Then she ventures over to the Someone waiting for her, and takes their hand. Karen has a brief impression of a gap-toothed smile, and then both of them are gone. The garden folds up like lacquered panels, the golden light runs up like an hourglass in reverse, and then they are once more standing on a dark sidewalk in New York, cabs splashing dirty slush as they pass, as Karen inhales a gasping breath, presses a hand to her mouth, and starts to cry.

Frank looks a little stunned himself, even as he clumsily reaches out and doesn’t seem to know exactly how to comfort her. “I’m sorry,” he says at last. “You shouldn’t have – I don’t know why you came too. It should have just been me.”

Karen wipes her eyes, a little upset with herself for coming unglued and forcing him to be the one to deal with it, though it’s at least something he must, terribly, have had to do before. She gulps hard, stomach hurting, as he pats her shoulder like he thinks she too might explode. It takes a few stinging, struggling breaths, but she wrestles herself under control. At last she says, not as a question, “It doesn’t ever get easier, does it.”

“No.” Frank doesn’t look at her, face shadowed. “No, it never does.”

There’s not much you can say to that, not after what has just happened, not now. There are other questions, there are all the questions in the world, but right now, Karen doesn’t think she wants to ask them, or make him have to answer. Instead she reaches out, fumbling, and catches hold of his hand. Squeezes hard, and holds on, holds on. His fingers are strong and callused and cold, but there’s some faint echo of a heartbeat in them, somewhere. He’s not dead, he’s not a walking corpse. He’s just been cursed to remain exactly as he is, to endure, to go on, when everyone he has ever loved has died. She doesn’t know if it is unbreakable, if it will always be this way. For his sake, she almost hopes it’s not. Perfect, absolute immortality has always sounded horrifying to her, far more than desirable. To be there when the stars go out, when all time ends, with the weight of generation upon generations passing away, all the Izzys, all the ghosts – no. She could not stand it, whether for herself or for him. If she could take it away from him, bear it on her own shoulders, even for a single day, she would.

Frank looks up at her, startled, and their eyes meet, before his gaze falls half-unconsciously to her lips. For a moment, Karen thinks he’s going to kiss her, and doesn’t know that she’d refuse. Instead he leans forward, and they rest their foreheads against each other’s, as she grips him by the arms and for an unstrung moment, they sway. It’s easier to bear what just happened that way, in silence, in solidarity. They do make some sort of good team. She knows that if this was, God forbid, her job, she would find it much easier with a companion.

After another spellbound moment, Frank pulls away. Nods to her like he’s going to say something else, but can’t find the words. So, as she is the one to stand there and watch, as more tears well in her eyes, as she wipes them away but more keep falling, he is the one who fades.

 

**VI.**

November and December pass without Karen seeing Frank again. The holidays are always a sucky time of year when you don’t speak with your family, but at least she has Foggy and Matt, and they’re more than willing to hang out and celebrate some weird amalgam of Chrismukkah with her – not very theologically consistent, perhaps, but it has a tree and stockings and a dreidel and challah bread and presents, and they drink hot toddys and watch holiday movies crammed on the couch together (Foggy considerately narrates for Matt, at least until Matt informs him to shut the fuck up). Karen puts her head on Matt’s shoulder and tries to be all right, to feel like she isn’t missing something, some vital part of herself. She isn’t even sure she’d know.

There’s still far more going on in Matt’s life than he’s ever going to admit, of that she and Foggy are quite sure, but by unspoken agreement, they have given up trying to pry. Likewise, Foggy has decided to let the delicate subject of Frank Castle lie, especially since he has rather literally gone back underground, and on New Year’s Eve, the three of them sit up until midnight and wear stupid tacky glasses and cheer the ball drop in Times Square. This is what people do, Karen thinks. They make friends, they survive, they move on. They heal. They have to.

It’s January and it’s wet and grey and endlessly cold, and there’s a huge explosion at a warehouse involving Wilson Fisk somehow and Matt is MIA for three days, finally fished out of some gutter as a total mess and no matter previous arrangements, Karen and Foggy can’t hold back their worried questions. Some local nurse named Claire helps piece his ass back together and says he’ll probably be all right, but Jesus, and when she’s gone, Foggy storms over to his prostrate best friend and demands, “How many fingers am I holding up? Huh?”

Matt cracks a bleary eye. “One.”

“That’s right.” Foggy surveys him angrily. “Don’t forget it.”

Matt lets out a pained sigh and turns half onto his back, staring at the ceiling. With that, Karen decides she’ll apologize later if she’s mistaken, but she doesn’t think she is. “Are you the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen?”

Matt goes tense. He doesn’t want to answer directly, that much is clear, and the silence is almost all the confirmation she could ever need. There’s a look on Foggy’s face like he either knew or strongly suspected this beforehand, and Karen almost wants to ream out both of them for keeping things like this from her, that they could sit on the couch in that cozy ease and know that and not tell her. She’s almost come to expect this evasion from Matt, but Foggy – Foggy could have told her. They’re supposed to be her friends, her family, and right now, she feels slapped in the face.

“Karen,” Matt starts at last, apparently sensing that icy expression. “Karen, look – Fisk is – he has to be stopped, he’s – ”

“Yeah,” Karen says, a little woodenly. “Yeah, I know what he is.”

Matt seems about to ask how she does, then decides he might as well avoid getting himself into more difficulty. Probably the first time he’s ever had that mindset in his life, if the inheritance of Battlin’ Jack Murdock and his apparently singular hankering to get his ass repeatedly kicked is anything to go by. “Okay,” Matt rushes on. “Fine, then, you know why I have to stop him. He’s threatening this city, all of the people in it, he can’t be allowed to – ”

“Do you?” Karen says evenly. “Do _you_ have to be the one to stop him?”

“Who else can?” Matt’s battered fists clench. “I’m the only one.”

“You’re not alone, jackass,” Foggy says. “And if you think that, you really are an idiot.”

“You and Karen can’t help me with this, buddy.” Matt turns away. “I have to do it myself.”

Karen is oddly and uselessly tempted to remind him that there is at least one other person in this city who knows Fisk’s true identity and might be substantially equipped to do something about it, but that would require Matt to get over himself and be willing to ask for Frank’s help. For that matter, Karen has no idea if Frank would even consider it, if this is an acceptable intervention in the world of the living, or after what happened with Izzy, he’s going to stay down in the dark and not risk having to do that again so soon. It might be easier, after all, if they come to you on the river, faceless and anonymous and without their mother’s desperate screaming rattling in your ears. Besides, it was made clear the first time the subject of Frank arose that he and Matt have substantial philosophical differences, to say the least. Trying to force these two, both of whom have a claim to being the devil in a metaphorical or literal capacity, to play nice with others, even to take down the biggest devil of all, might be more trouble than it’s worth.

Karen wants to say a lot of things, just then. She’s not sure she should go to the effort of any of it, and wonders what she’s going to build her life on, in this place, if it can’t even be her friends. She’ll get over this, maybe. She’ll decide to trust again, probably. But right then, she can’t look at either of them, especially Matt. She whirls on her heel and walks out.

Her phone buzzes a few times as she strides ferociously down the sidewalk, until she reaches into her bag and turns it off. It’s one of those January days chiefly distinguishable only by being almost February, which will then last for eighty years despite being the shortest month on the calendar. Karen wraps her jacket more tightly and ducks her head against the wind. It’s another northerner, maybe that explains it. Shit getting weird, secrets being unearthed, things fall apart. They always do, eventually. Especially for her.

And yet, even as Karen keeps walking, lost in her brooding and her betrayal and her anger, she starts to see things in the city that she never has before. It would be easy for it to be the worst parts of it, given the way she feels. It could be all the grime and the rudeness and the crowds, and it could be whatever dark and evil thing Wilson Fisk embodies, whatever terror he is or serves. But instead, it’s different. As Karen passes, she sees New York’s magic poking its head up like a crocus after a long winter, at the very edge of spring. It’s almost Groundhog Day, who knows if Phil will see his shadow, but this is different. She can feel it. It makes her stop and look around.

She doesn’t know how she knows it, but she does, that there’s a down-at-heel coin laundry in Queens where there’s a golden coin in the register, a golden coin that never gets spent, and once upon a time it lay in a cave deep beneath the sands of Persia, and a poor thief named Ali Baba picked up to take it home. As long as it stays in the register, the laundry’s owners get enough, they get by. It might be a small blessing, but it’s better than none. Karen turns her head, and she senses a small hole-in-the-wall family Italian eatery, where a few times a month a wealthy, ageless man with slightly pointed ears comes in to eat, and loves the food, and something good happens to them after that. Everyone already knows the Museum of Natural History is supposed to come to life at night. There is much more, though. That is only the start.

There are very old women in rent-controlled flats who could tell you about dancing at the Winter Palace in Russia, women who spin wheels and weave out lives far longer than the usual thread, who came here crowded in steerage and forgot their songs and their spells. There are covens of younger witches too, with nose rings and iPhones, who trade enchantments by emojis. There are alchemists manning the counter at Starbucks and warlocks who work in IT and a man who claims to have built Roger Bacon’s brazen head, that can answer any question put to it. There are animals in the zoo at Central Park that would speak to you, if you knew their tongue. There are old and valuable books in university special collections that whisper of Renaissance magic, white and otherwise. There are ley lines woven beneath the subway tracks and through the old pastures of Nieuw Amsterdam and the boggy island sold by the Manhattan Lenape for sixty guilders. There are old spirits still sleeping, even after so long. And there are some, formless, omniscient, neither good nor evil, too far removed from the petty concerns of humanity – _Lord, what fools these mortals be –_ who are very much awake. If you see footprints in the untouched snow, where nobody else could have walked, you should not follow them into the trees.

Karen stops short, almost struggles to breathe, as all of this hits her like a high-speed download, as she can’t understand or fathom why this city has chosen to show its hand to her now. After all, she thought New York was ordinary, she thought it was safe, and yet now it’s bursting out all over. As if where she walks, she’s waking it up from winter, the occultation has ended and everyone can show their true colors. Maybe she has brought it with her, embedded in her bones, a girl who grew up never more than a stone’s throw from the place where the wild began. She was fooling herself that this was ever any different. It is still a world of wonder, and of terror.

Karen stands there for a long moment, hoping the assault of senses, of knowledge and memory will end – and yet there’s something else, something like sheer relief, as if she’s unlocked their cages and now they can show their face. The queen has called them, they seem to say. What else could they do but come, and kneel?

This strange, impossible, heightened fantasia lasts for another few instants, as all the magic in New York swirls eagerly around her, desperate to make itself known to her, and then it finally cuts out, goes silent, and the world resumes regular operations. Karen goes to her knees, shaky and breathless, pressing her gloved hands into the cold ground, trying to steady herself. As she watches, a small shoot of tender, pale-stalked grass pops up, and then, after a moment, another.

Karen stares at her hands, as to say the least, she has never caused anything to inadvertently start growing before. Maybe it’s just a leftover result from whatever magical doorway she walked through, and she waits to see if more grass sprouts, but it doesn’t. She hesitates, then shucks her glove off with her teeth, flexes her fingers in the cold air, and puts her hand in the dirt.

There’s definitely something this time, some kind of subdued spark, that she feels travel out into the webwork of sleeping roots, the dormant ground, and quite a few green buds rise out of the cold earth. When she takes her hand away, a small patch of barren brown ground has turned into a lush emerald oasis as if it’s been brought straight from high summer. If she had the time and inclination, she might be able to make this whole park bloom, in January-and-or-February. It might freeze again anyway, and everyone would be very confused, but still.

Karen shakes her head, still baffled, and pulls her glove back on. She doesn’t quite want to go back to face Foggy and Matt just yet, and with what just happened, she has – call it some kind of idea, but it’s more than that, it is a conviction, and no matter what, she thinks it will work. She steps off into a secluded corner of the park, under the bare, dripping trees, and puts her hand on a branch, until it uncurls with white blossoms. Into the shadows, she says, “Frank?”

There’s no response at first, and Karen clears her throat. “Frank,” she says again. “Frank Castle.”

This time – it’s difficult to say what exactly shifts, or when she sees anything that she did not a second before, but then, just that simply, there he is, stepping out of the gloaming and coming to a halt a few feet away. He looks oddly tentative, as if he’s not sure how she’s going to react to seeing him, if there’s a chance they could both be whisked away again to help a child die. But there’s a smile in his eyes when he gazes at her, even if it doesn’t quite reach his mouth, and the warmth that Karen feels does not come from the dim and distant sun. He says at last, “Hey.”

“Hey.” Karen didn’t know, didn’t expect, how much she needed this, not until now, and it floods her chest almost painfully, like broken glass and healing balm, a sickness and its cure together. She tries to say something else, and smiles like a lunatic. “It’s – it’s good to see you.”

Frank shrugs, almost diffidently, as if to say he’s glad to hear it, and he still isn’t used to anyone welcoming the sight. Maybe there are some, people who are old and ready to rest and who have lived a good life, who sit up and wait for him, on the nights he chooses to venture out of the underworld and take them personally in hand. But as they stand there face to face, him dark and rugged and grim and Karen pink-cheeked, flushed, blossoms trailing from a frozen tree and grass rising from the barren ground, the contrast could not be more striking. Winter and spring, death and life, hell and heaven. Then leaf subsides to leaf, and so Eden sank to grief.

“Hey,” Karen says at last, again, throat thick. “I actually – I had a question for you. Wilson Fisk, he’s – he’s been doing something, I don’t know exactly what. My – my friend. Matt. He’s… well, he’s been trying to fight him, and he… and he…”

Her throat closes and she can’t spell it out exactly, that Matt has been lying to her or at least keeping a huge part of his life from her by omission, but Frank seems to intuitively understand. He raises both eyebrows, and doesn’t look terribly impressed. “What,” he says. “You mean Red? Sanctimonious prick in a mask and little boys’ pajamas? Yeah, I met him. Told him to stay away from the goddamn warehouse, too, but he doesn’t know when to stay down.”

Karen gapes at him. “You _know_ him?”

“I know Red,” Frank says. “We’ve crossed paths a couple times now. He ain’t too happy about me, even if I can’t do what I used to. I would if I still could, let me tell you that. If I could kill the people who actually fuckin’ deserved it, rather than having to wait for them to die – I still would, Karen, I would take every one of those assholes down. Maybe that’s why I’m stuck doing this job, I’m supposed to learn patience or forgiveness or some shit, but I – ”

He breaks off, rubbing a hand over his mouth, trying to control himself. There’s a fraught moment. Then he says, “Fisk is the one thing I can still fight, one monster I still have the right to take out, and I can tell you, I don’t need Red’s help, he needs my help. Trying to take that on by himself, your boyfriend’s gonna get his ass killed. Nearly did, by the looks of things.”

“Matt’s not my boyfriend.” Karen blurts it out almost too fast, as if it’s essential that they establish this point. The two of them have flirted, and there’s been something there, unspoken and possible to explore, and she’s had the thought a few times that maybe they should. But whenever they’ve come to the brink of doing it, something has intervened to separate them, and she thinks about something else. “Last year, last October, you turned up when Fisk – when he wanted to talk to me. Why?”

“He didn’t want to talk to you,” Frank says flatly. “I can fuckin’ promise you that.”

“Yes, but – ” Karen doesn’t know what she’s asking for, or what she wants him to say. “Why did he want me?”

“Figured you might be useful,” Frank says, clearly considering his words. “You can see me, and you aren’t dead. Fisk wants me destroyed, and you – ” He pauses, then shrugs. “You could be valuable for that. Guess he thought he could hurt me that way, if he found out what you knew.”

Karen doesn’t think she should ask exactly what Fisk is, other than some kind of ancient and evil entity much worse than Frank, who wants a monopoly on death in this city and will do away with Frank’s ruthlessly impartial system, where the good get their rewards and the bad get their just desserts, sending the souls on to whatever eternal fate they earned in life. If Fisk gets control, he can capture all the dearly departed and have them toil as slaves in his infernal kingdom, forever. Everyone goes to hell, no exceptions. And while this place where all of them are from might be called Hell’s Kitchen, there’s still a long shot of difference between the two. There would be no escape in death, no solace, nothing but endless torment. And with each one, Fisk would grow stronger. Could move beyond New York. Could dispossess other underworlds, perhaps. Everywhere.

“Oh,” Karen says, because she can’t think of anything else. They continue to look at each other, a muscle works in his cheek, and she fumbles to reassure him. “You don’t need to keep me safe.”

“What?” Frank looks absolutely incredulous. “What do you mean, I don’t need to keep you safe? From Wilson fuckin’ Fisk, Karen, from what he is, what he wants – I cannot let that happen to you, all right? I cannot let that happen!”

Taken aback by his vehemence, Karen starts to say something else, then stops. She doesn’t know why this man, this entity, this old and weary revenant, should have taken such a protective interest in her, and nor does she know why her soul should point to him like a compass needle, unswerving and unerring, swinging around to true north wherever it lies. Perhaps the reason she came to New York, the reason she was drawn here, was not for the lack of magic – there is, as noted, apparently far too much of it – and was ultimately not for Foggy and Matt either, much as she loves them. Maybe, deep down, in something impossible and primal, it was always Frank.

It shakes her, it frightens her, and yet, it’s not something she wants to reject, or deny, or turn from. It feels almost a relief to have considered the possibility, and to admit the hollow ache in her soul that longs for rest, for surcease, for him. She doesn’t know why it should hurt so terribly and so sweetly, _odio et amo,_ and it cuts her raw. Without a sound, her eyes fill with tears.

Frank sees it, and apparently thinks it’s something else, that perhaps he’s shouted at her too much or otherwise hurt her, and takes an urgent step. “Hey,” he says by her ear, gruff and gentle, their faces close in the gathering dark. “Karen, hey.”

With that, he leans in, and kisses her cheek. It is the softest and most unexpected, understated of gestures, clearly intended as simple comfort, but Karen turns her head, and their mouths catch instead. His breath is winter, but his lips are warm. Her eyelashes flutter, her hands cup and caress the sharp, angular lines of his face. They sigh into each other’s mouths, more blossoms come spurting up from the tree like a film in fast-forward, and white petals drift around them in the dimness, as he wraps his arms around her and kisses her back for a ferocious, breathless, unbearable five or ten seconds. Then he lets go of her on the double, like he’s remembered himself, and steps back, wiping his mouth with his hand. “I should,” he says, not looking at her. “Karen, I should – I should go.”

Maybe he should, and maybe so should she. It is still, after all, impossible to think of having a future, not when they live on separate halves of the veil, the grand and central mystery of all human existence, the one place travelers pass into and never return. What she feels then – it is not love, not exactly, for that is not sufficient. _There,_ her soul says, and it blazes like falling stars, is the very science and sense and sinew of all the world. _There you are._

It always ends like this, with a parting. One or the other of them goes.

This time, too, it ends with heartbreak.

**VII.**

Karen floats through the next few weeks like something out of a dream. February lasts forty years, and then somehow its dreary monotony is slain, and buds start to appear on the underside of the trees, the frozen skin on the ponds and outfalls and parking-lot pools begins to break, and she walks through the park on a wet green evening and makes several beds of flowers burst up and unfold their petals. None of it, however, can touch the ice that encases her heart, harder and deeper and impossible to chip away. She doesn’t even know why she’s grieving so much. It seems stupid. It is no different. He was only ever going to pass through, and if she has lost him without ever really having him, well. What else could you expect, to love the end of all things?

Something is coming, though. Something is waiting. She does not know what, but she can sense it. She takes to carrying her gun when she leaves the house, and looking both ways when she’s walking home at night, and glances too long at any stranger who seems to have a particular interest. It is as if the sand runs down in a great hourglass, and she must be prepared – but for what, and when, and why, and where? There are no answers. There never are. Beware the ides of March, perhaps? Maybe it’s the fifteenth of March, the day that she should look out for. She does not know whether to run from it, or embrace it. Face her destiny headfirst.

It is not the fifteenth of March. It is a week later, March twenty-first, the night of the spring equinox, when Wilson Fisk kidnaps her.

Karen does not realize what has happened at first. It’s only that when she steps out of Nelson & Murdock at eight PM and locks the door, the shadows are too dark and there is something breathing behind her, and when she grabs the gun and whirls to face it, it comes roaring up like a freight train, overpowers her and devours her and strips the flesh from her bones, almost literally. She is engulfed in whirling nothingness, down and down and down, every breath stabbing under her ribs until there is no more breath at all, and she loses consciousness for a while. When she wakes up, she is bound hand and foot to a chair, her mouth is gritty and her head aches, and Wilson Fisk looms across from her, in a tailored suit and cufflinks. He seems to have been waiting for her to wake up, and when he sees that she has, he smiles. The human flesh he wears still cannot quite accommodate the demonic bones beneath. “Miss Page.”

Karen stares coolly back at him, refusing to show any hint of fear. She has suspected their business was not done; he doesn’t seem like the kind of demon to give up, especially not after she got away from him in Washington Heights thanks to Frank. “Mr. Fisk.”

Fisk jerks his head, and something – his henchmen, perhaps, though not men at the moment – scuttles away into the shadows, leaving them alone. Then he says, “I apologize for this unpleasantness, Miss Page. It is not usually my style. After all, you and I, we are a higher order of being. We can impose order and design, beauty, civilization, on this scurrying realm of ants. I could not take the risk that you would misunderstand me, do something regrettable, before I could fully explain myself. But now we can speak, and you can know who you really are.”

With that, he clicks his fingers, and the bindings on Karen’s hands and feet fall away. A table and another chair whirl into existence, knitting together from smoke and soot, set with china and crystal and silverware. There are two meals laid on it, a steak tartare and a glass of wine. Karen tries not to look at the redness of the meat, or wonder too much what it is, as Fisk seats himself across from her, tucks a napkin into his collar, and makes a gesture. The strains of a Mozart sonata float out of the ether, until Karen wonders if he thinks they’re on some sort of romantic-magical-cannibal dinner date. Of course, she’s not nearly enough of an idiot to eat or drink any of it, as Fisk lifts his knife and fork and cuts the meat. It bleeds on the plate, and he takes a dainty bite. “Are you not hungry, Miss Page?”

Karen is, she’s very hungry, but not for anything that is laid before her. “What is this?” she bursts out. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Civilization, Miss Page. It divides men from animals, and us from men.” Fisk takes another bite. “Come now. On some level, you must always have known who – _what_ – you are. You’ve been running from it your whole life, but you don’t need to run any more. I can help you. You can work for me, and we will make the entire world anew. Burn down the old, and build something far greater and more magnificent in its place.”

There is a fraught pause as they consider each other. Fisk dabs the blood from the corner of his mouth, and sips the wine. He looks at her untouched plate. “Eat.”

Karen smiles, and does not lift a finger. She sits there, staring at him, until he finally continues, “As I said. I know what you are.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.” He stares at her with those viper’s eyes, blood-red pupils like a depthless scarlet sea. “I know you’re a monster too, Miss Page. I know you killed your brother.”

That rocks her back on her heels, though perhaps she should have foreseen that a demon would know that. God, no, she never meant it, she never did. It got out of hand, she didn’t know how to control it – Kevin was just trying to help her, trying to stop it, but it was too late and it was too strong and she can still see the flesh being flayed from his face by the force of the power bursting and burning and bleeding from her, and the way she collapsed at his side when he was nothing more than a crumpled red rag, and still thought he might open his eyes. That was why she had to run from Vermont, from magic, from her family, from all of it, to the seductive safety of New York and the promise that here, at least, there was no chance of it ever happening again. But now that’s not the case, now she knows the magic and it knows her, and she is face to face with an actual monster who thinks they are the same, who must want her to come and perform her talents on his behalf. Is _that_ what – can he possibly – ? No. _No._

“I never wanted it,” Karen says at last, hoarsely. “I did everything I could to stop it from ever happening again. And I would never, ever do it for you.”

“You should think about this, you know.” Fisk takes another bite. “You’re a very powerful witch, Miss Page, and you can’t live like a human forever, as much as you want to pretend. You’ll become too tired of their flaws and their failings, their shortcomings, their hypocrisy and their stupidity. You’ll want to fix it, just like me. We can help each other. We can be great.”

Karen looks at him, and looks at him, and does not answer. The Mozart sonata no longer sounds so sweet, harsh and discordant, the world turning into splinters beyond the edge of the dark. She does not know if he is wrong. She _could_ be a monster.

(And yet.)

Karen says, “No.”

“Do not underestimate me, Miss Page.” Fisk’s eyes have turned sepulchral. “Do not think that I will not lay waste to whatever I must, if it means that our kind can rise again, and take our rightful place. No more skulking in the shadows, no more staying one step to the side. I want you to be part of that. I want to be joined by as many of us as I can. But if you resist, if you choose wrongly, I _will_ destroy you. Don’t make me do that.”

Karen looks down at the ground. At the moment, it is formless, it could be anything. Fisk has not thought to fix it one way or another, and just then, she knows. She thinks at it that she needs it to be earth, that she needs it to be dirt. Soil, wet and rich and containing all the potentiality of life, and then, in the next instant, it is. Her heels sink into it, and mud splatters at her skirt, as she pushes back from the table, and rises to her feet. She stares Wilson Fisk dead in the eye, as he senses something wrong an instant too late and snaps his fingers, as the table burns away and now there is nothing between them. He uncoils like a serpent, and Karen acts.

She flings herself to her knees, to the earth, and buries both hands in it to the wrists. It is gritty and damp and dirty, as one might expect, but it is not grass or buds or gentle blooms that she summons now, no soft pastoral touch of spring. Karen snarls at him, and twists her arms, and giant vines explode from the ground like writhing serpents, roots bursting up to every direction as they lash at Fisk. One of them broadsides him and sends him flying, but he recovers to unleash a massive fireball at the nearest tangle, which scorches and chars them away. Karen feels it like physical pain in her flesh, but she doesn’t stop, punching at him with the next set, as one of Fisk’s hench-demons comes running and just like that, giving her a gruesome flashback, she kills him. It is not remotely hard. She grabs him with the roots and lifts him off his feet, snaps his neck, and tosses the husk aside like chaff. Thinks briefly, luridly, of something she heard once, that Persephone would intervene for you, reconcile, mediate, urge her husband to mercy. But if _Persephone_ was the one roused to fury, then God help you all. Nothing could save you then. Nothing even had a chance.

Karen doesn’t stop, doesn’t dare, as she lurches to her feet and she and Fisk circle each other, trading heavy blows like boxers in the ring, as if anyone could go down to Fogwell’s Gym and train for this. He bombards her with ruthless attacks, fire and brimstone and acid, that eat into the vines and poison the roots faster than she can draw up new ones. His hits are starting to land, and Karen can feel blood soaking into her shirt and her skirt from a thousand wounds. This isn’t enough, she needs more, she isn’t strong enough to finish him alone, and yet she has already thrown everything she has into it. Any more and it will kill her, but if it takes him too –

Karen is only aware of a huge shadow leaping over her, and the sound of snapping jaws. It hits Fisk full-on, knocking his next blow aside, and as she rolls away, dazed and breathless, she can just make out a massive shadow that, beyond all doubt, has three snarling, frothing, blood-maddened heads. This is not Spot the friendly mutt. This is Cerberus, the guardian of the gates of the underworld, and even Fisk is having to work hard to duck the three sets of slashing, biting fangs, the rakes of foot-long claws. They roll over and over, locked in more-than-mortal combat, as Karen tries to get up, looks down, and sees there is quite a lot of blood on her clothes by now. She feels lightheaded, and has to sit back down. No, no. Come on. One more. One more.

After a blinded moment, Karen gathers up everything she has, though she gasps and almost retches at the effort, and forces one final set of vines from the earth, a huge grasping hand. It seizes hold of Fisk as Cerberus pins him flat, and squeezes, squeezes, as Karen vomits something black and disgusting and goes to all fours, desperate to maintain the connection for as long as she can. Then Cerberus snarls and bites, the vines pull closed, and there is a hollow, echoing _boom_ like a cannon. Fisk’s head slumps, and that quickly, the world goes still.

Karen gasps, gulps, spits out more of the black poison, and falls back on her ass, unable to summon the strength to get up. She _thinks_ Fisk might be dead, but she can’t tell, and she can’t find out. She is bleeding harder now. It will hurt, most likely. Hurt a great deal, and soon.

Cerberus looks at her, and whines. Then it twists and shrinks and grows smaller, two of the heads vanish, and in another moment it’s Spot again, Spot the mutt, who comes over to her and licks the wound on her stomach, the deep gashes in both shoulders, as Karen tries to smile at him through her tears and raise a hand to stroke his head. He lies down next to her, and whines again, and it’s then that she sees the other shape across the way. She doesn’t know if he’s been here the whole time, going through the rest of Fisk’s demons like a hot knife through butter, or if he only just arrived, but then he sees her, and the look on his face is unspeakable.

The next instant, Frank is at her side, kneeling next to her, hands searching for something to fix, anything at all to stave off the possibility that the next soul he carries into the afterlife is hers. “No,” he says, over and over, a single, useless incantation. “Karen, no, no, _no._ What the fuck were you doing? What the – Karen, no, I told you to stay away from him, no!”

Karen wants to say that Fisk grabbed her, this was for once not her fault, but she doesn’t have the breath. He stares at her for an instant longer, and then does something with his hand, and he’s holding a red fruit that she vaguely recognizes as a pomegranate. He looks at it, then back at her, and finally says, “This can – this can save you. But there’s a cost, okay, there’s a cost. Each seed you eat, it means you have to. . . stay. In the underworld. I don’t think you – ”

“What?” Karen stares at him. “You mean we – that I could – ”

“Don’t,” Frank says, anguished. “Don’t – not for me. Not for me, huh? Karen. Don’t.”

She looks at it, and at him, and the wreckage of the dead things around them, the ruined and smoking ground. She does not want to die, and she does not know what she is, witch or woman, if she lives above or below, behind or beyond. What her magic is, what it can do – she already knows that it could be terrible. And this, somehow, is the only place where it might not matter. Where she could stop, and settle, and sleep. Where she could go home.

Karen reaches out and takes the pomegranate from him with the last of her strength. Lifts it to her mouth, and eats a seed.

She can feel something, a knitting-together, a healing, but one is not enough to mend all the damage that Fisk has done to her. She has to eat a second, and after that, a third. She can’t look at Frank’s face as she’s doing it, but this is her choice, hers, and when three are not enough to hold her back together, she must eat a fourth, and then a fifth. Almost there, almost but not entirely, and it is not until she eats the sixth pomegranate seed that she knows she is one more safe, healed and strong and whole – more than she was before, more than anything she has ever been. She can hear water running, somewhere. Can sense the boat coming. It is time, now, to see what she has bought, the price she has paid. It is time.

This does not end with parting. Not for once.

This ends with apotheosis.

 

**VIII.**

The underworld does not look how Karen remembers it. The dourness and dampness and the old rusting beams are gone, and it is something dark and delightful, like a night-blooming flower. Perhaps this is how Frank saw it all along, or perhaps it was inevitable that it should change now that a new mistress rules here, and now that she is part-dead herself, she can see the places they come and go, the wells of clear water that go down into the earth, and the pale stone columns twined with lilies and orchids, and the doorways that open into places that perhaps do look a bit like King’s Cross. She does not have anything to fear from any of it. It calls her home.

Frank keeps a careful distance for the first few days (weeks? Months? More?) of her new residence, for both of them know it has been bought at a terrible price, and the full extent of that is still making itself clear. He tells her that she can have whatever she wants, but he still hasn’t seemed to realize that what she wants, the reason she risked eating those seeds, what she can no longer bear to be apart from, is him. She did not sacrifice her life to be with him. But when the choice was before her, it was very simple, and she intends to see it through.

At last, Karen decides that Lord of the Dead or not, he may need some help, and goes to his bedroom that evening to wait. It’s difficult to say exactly how time passes down here, as it is never in accordance with the human idea of it, and he’s kept busy with the souls that arrive on the river. She’s seen some of them, sat in a few of the judgments, but Frank seems to want to shield her from it, to make it easier, as much like Above as possible, for whenever she returns. She ate half the pomegranate. Is that half a year? Do Matt and Foggy think she’s dead?

And yet, that does not matter, not right now, not here in the dreaming twilight, as she sits on the bed (it’s not an army cot anymore – it’s spacious and smooth and comfortable, and sometimes in it, she sees the stars) and waits. Waits until he comes in and finds her there, and looks startled, glancing away. “Karen,” he starts. “Karen, you don’t have to – ”

Neither of them find out what the rest of that sentence would be, mainly because she slides to the end of the bed, rises up on her knees, takes firm hold of him, and kisses him. She is in no doubt about this being exactly what she wants, and nor, she thinks, is he. But it’s difficult when they know she’s living here because she has to, because she ate six seeds of a pomegranate rather than die, and if there is any question about her consent, about whether this is obliged or expected, he will tread carefully with it. But Karen Page loves a damned boy, and he loves her, and his hands touching her are the lightest and gentlest of anything that could be imagined. He climbs up on the bed with her, and she tugs him closer, and they wonder, then, how to commence.

They undress carefully, touching and kissing between each, small whispers, awkward giggles, as he presses his forehead to hers and holds the back of her neck, as he runs his roughened fingers through her hair like sunlight, as she presses her lips to each new scar that comes to light. Until at last they are in nothing but their skins, these strange beautiful broken creatures that they are, some hint of forever in both their breaths, and they repeatedly and vigorously share it. He’s saying gruffly that you know, he’s probably no fuckin’ good at this after almost a century, and Karen could almost laugh because how does he possibly think that matters to her, and they tumble down on the bed together. They kiss again and again as Frank shifts himself, as their hands explore, as they pet and cup and caress, until at last he looks at her, looks at nothing but her eyes, at her. She gives him a breathless little nod, lips parting, and he claims her, to the hilt, with a single remorseless thrust.

Karen gulps, wraps her arms around his shoulders, twists her legs around his, holds onto him as if he is the only steady thing in all of the universe, and he likewise clings to her. “Jesus, Karen,” he mumbles, until she is possessed with the demented urge to ask him if Jesus is in fact relevant in this line of work, might be a professional colleague. But she doesn’t want anything or anyone else but him, Frank Castle, all the ridiculous and impossible things that he may be. She lifts her mouth to his, and her hips up as well, encouraging him to take her still deeper, ride her harder, as her fingernails stripe pale lines down the carved muscles of his shoulders and it becomes something still more primal, the coupling of man and woman, the king and queen on their wedding night, eternal and elemental. He is inside her, and she is everywhere, and every _when,_ and Karen does not feel like a monster after all, not down here in the dark with a man who, by every right, she should. She is transcendent, transcended, imperfectly perfect. Safe.

They move faster, rolling over and over, thrusts more ragged, losing time, as they jerk and clutch and hold tighter, as they kiss until their lips are raw and he tangles his hand in her hair and pulls her head back, buries his face in her neck, gives himself to her heart and body and soul. Karen kisses the shell of his ear and cups the back of his head, lies with their legs in a tangle and knows, as if she had any doubt before, that this was only the first time, that she has no intention of stopping. He’s mumbling apologies in case it sucked, and she does laugh this time at the fact that the actual Lord of the Dead could be so concerned about pleasing his wife in bed (she’d say _girlfriend,_ or something less significant, and yet). “Frank,” she says, and kisses him. It transpires that’s an effective way to shut him up, and their smiles at each other in the dimness, tentative and crooked and delighted, are more than enough to tell the truth. “Shhh, Frank.”

She just likes saying his name, likes feeling him inside her and on top of her, likes knowing that he is so utterly hers, and in turn, that there is no question any more that she belongs to anyone but him. After a moment, he rolls off to settle next to her, and pull the quilts up, and there in the heart of darkness, they hold each other, _hold onto me, never let me go._

After that, it’s easier between them, and certainly far more enjoyable on a generally nightly basis, and things grow. Vines and flowers twine around the columns, and grass springs up on bare paths, and sometimes you’d even think you saw the sun. The underworld has its own ghostly beauty, its delicate echoes, its strangeness and sweetness and charm, and Karen has grown so used to living there that one night when Frank tells her that she has to leave tomorrow, she’s horrified. Holds onto him harder, as if that will stop it, and finds herself resisting with every scrap of her being. New York has become a faint dream, she has not thought about it in who knows how long. “No,” she says. “No, Frank, I want to stay. With you.”

“Me too.” He wraps his arms around her waist, nuzzles her hair. “But you can’t. You’re not dead. You ate six seeds, you stayed here six months, and now you have to go back for another six months, yeah? That’s the deal. That’s the deal.”

Karen doesn’t answer. She thought that if anything, living six months among the darkness and the dead might be the trial, but now, the idea of going back seems like the far greater sacrifice. She does not want to, she does not want to go. But somehow, as ever, she will have to. Karen has always left places, always been able to, to remake herself even if she was in pieces before. It’s a talent, perhaps. She will go on. She will survive.

She leaves the next morning. She holds onto Frank as long as she can as he helps her into the  boat, and he kisses her hand and says it’ll be good to be back above again, she’ll remember, it’ll be fine, it’ll be fine. But it still takes everything they have to tear their fingers apart, and let the boat set sail, and she looks back until there’s nothing to see, just a cement wall, and a subway platform, and the distant sound of an arriving train.

Karen picks herself up, rises to her feet slowly, brushes herself off. The air is hot and thick and noisy, rattling through her veins, as she finds out that it’s the last day of August and she has been missing for just under six months. New York is sweaty and sunbaked and gasping for breath, and Karen’s hair sticks to the back of her neck as she makes her way uptown, wondering how she’s going to explain this. It doesn’t seem possible.

She finally reaches the office, and knocks on the clouded glass with its emblazoned letters, _Nelson & Murdock, _and despite her heartbreak at leaving Frank, something pokes up its head and takes a hopeful sniff. She wants to be here, at least for a little while. She is ready to see her friends again. She is ready to be home.

Foggy opens the door, and sees her, and stares. Opens and shuts his mouth a good three times before he gets anywhere. Finally, he croaks, “Karen?”

“I’m so sorry.” Her tears, barely held back, quickly well over. “I’m so sorry.”

She doesn’t get anything else out, because Foggy takes two steps and hugs the breath out of her, hugs her until she can’t breathe, and part of her feels dishonest, that he should be yelling at her like they did at Matt, that now that she’s lived with a vast secret and never told them (to be fair, there was no way she could have), she understands why Matt kept the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen to himself. But there will be time for all of that later, and she just wants to walk up to her own house again, and have her family there waiting, and it is that, it is them, these stupid stubborn frustrating wonderful avocados at law, and beyond all words, she is grateful.

 

**IX.**

Karen goes to visit Curtis Hoyle a few weeks later.

It’s been strange, settling back into her life with the knowledge she will have to leave it again in March (she wonders if they can get that switched around, so she can spend winters in the underworld and summers above, but there is time to balance the scales later). She has tried to explain it to Matt and Foggy the best she can, even if it sounds insane, and she doesn’t know if they entirely believe her, but they have at least acted like they do. It will take time, this realization, them coming around to the idea that she has common-law married the Lord of the Dead and now is magically obliged to spend half the year with him in the underworld. It being Frank Castle is also not very popular, but they’re trying. It’s all she can ask for right now.

Karen doesn’t know if Curtis wants to see her again, but he is the only person that she can talk with about Frank, ask all the questions she has, and who might believe her fully when she tells him what happened. And indeed, when she goes up the stairs to Room 308 and knocks, he seems pleased to see her. He’s looking frail, less substantial than he did on her last visit, and he takes a while to respond when she’s finally finished the saga. Then he says, “Good. Good.”

“So you. . .” Karen hesitates. It seems like he does, but she has to be sure. “You believe me?”

“Yeah, I believe you.” Curtis flashes her a wry, weary smile. “Sounds like exactly the kind of nonsense Frank used to get himself into. But if it is that way – you know, I’m glad. He’s been alone a long time, longer than any of us can think of. It’s not right for a man to live that way. And you two – you understand each other. Make a good pair.”

“Th – thank you.” Karen didn’t know that she needed it as much as she did until he said it, and  has to fight her emotions. They sit there, Curtis smiling to himself in the sun, and she reaches out and squeezes his hand. “Thank you.”

He nods to her, and anything she could say seems trite, and the silence stays a few moments more. Then he finally starts to talk, tells her what he can remember about who Frank was in life, what they did and where they went. If he’s not telling her everything about the horrors of the war, Karen thinks she can allow an old man that solace. Says they met first day they were shipped out, Curtis got treated like shit because he was a black man, to hell with the fact that he was wearing the American flag and fighting the Japanese same as them. But Frank never saw that, never treated him any different than any of his other brothers, and they forged a deep and abiding loyalty. Someone named Billy Russo comes up, then and again, but Curtis won’t say much. Karen has the sense that Russo might be responsible in some way, direct or indirect, for how Frank ended up as Lord of the Dead, but that’s a story for him to tell.

At last, Curtis runs out of things he was going to say, all that he can remember through all these years, and Karen hands him a glass of water. He seems tired now, dozing, and she wonders if she should slip off quietly and let him sleep. But just then, even though it’s overcast outside, something happens. There’s a rush and a sigh, and a door that does not belong to Curtis’s room opens, and then the next instant, Frank Castle his-goddamn-self walks in. He’s wearing his full dress uniform, shined and smartened up, medals on his chest, and he looks like he’s been crying.

At the sight of him, both Curtis and Karen go very still. Frank looks at both of them, at her, and doesn’t seem all that surprised to see her. After a long moment, he manages, “Hey.”

“Hey.” Her heart trembles like a fragile thing in her chest, she wants more than anything to run to him, but she knows why he’s here, and she can’t. They smile at each other, since it is all they can do right now, and a tear works its way out, down her cheek, and then another. “Hey, Frank.”

He nods to her, and then he turns to Curtis, who looks up at him, looks him up and down, and at last, in his turn, smiles too. “Frank, you son of a bitch,” he says. “It’s been a long time.”

“I know.” Frank clears his throat roughly, trying to control himself. “But it’s just you and me now, Curt. Just you and me. I – for this. For you. I had to come.”

Curtis considers him, then nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, you did. But you aren’t carrying my ass anywhere this time, Castle. Give me a second to get dressed.”

Frank clearly doesn’t trust himself to words, and nods brusquely, once. Stands rigidly at parade attention as Curtis gets up, hobbles over to his closet on his artificial leg and his cane, and pulls out his own uniform. It doesn’t fit quite like it did as a young man, but it’s still good, still good. He pulls it on with intent attention, straightens the creases, and dons the hat, then turns to Frank and salutes, with crisp and perfect precision. “Lieutenant.”

“Semper fi.” It’s all Frank can manage to say, and he comes over, takes hold of Curtis’s head, and rests their foreheads together. “You’ve done good, Marine. You’ve done good.”

“I’m ready,” Curtis says simply. “I’m ready now. Goodbye, Karen.”

“Goodbye, Curtis.” Karen’s throat is choked so hard she can barely stand it, but she gets up, and comes over to them, and embraces him, since he is the one she can touch. Frank is barely a breath away, she would give anything to throw herself into his arms, but she will not dishonor this moment, or distract it, or take away from what it is costing him to do this. Time will go on, and the year will turn, and they will be together again. She can live with that. She has to.

Frank looks at her, and looks at her, and then he turns away. He offers his arm to Curtis, and Curtis takes it. They walk forward, one-two-three, Frank matching his strides precisely to his companion’s, so they are not even an instant out of time. As they reach the door into the next life, Curtis says, “You better show me where you’ve been living all these years, asshole.”

Frank manages a laugh. “All right,” he says. “Maybe before you go on. We’ve got a little time, huh, Curt? We can have a beer. Catch up.”

“You’re the Lord of the Dead,” Curtis says. “I’d hope you make the rules.”

They look at each other, and they smile, and Frank looks back at Karen once more, and she presses a hand to her mouth and blows him a silent kiss. Then Frank discreetly helps Curtis up, and they step through, and for a moment, all the years have faded and they are young men again, and time is nothing, and all is made new. Then the door closes, as Karen smiles and cries and laughs all at once, and together, they are gone.


	2. Chapter 2

**I.**

It’s spring in New York City, and the world is ripe with magic. The blossoms are out on the trees, that wannabe actress rushing to an audition somehow had enough cash for the cab fare, the Mets didn’t blow it in the ninth inning, and among the dirty, oil-slick waters of the harbor, shining scales flash and flicker and vanish whenever you look for them. It’s too large to be a fish, and not too smart for you to walk alone on the docks late at night. Slimy, webbed hands could reach out of the lapping, scum-slick shallows, and drag you under. They’re not as dangerous as their wild cousins out in the Atlantic, who sing so sweetly and seize and drown you the instant they can, but they’re not fond of humans, or encroachments on their territory. But you can easily ward them off by buying an amulet for $1.50, off the old wizard’s sidewalk cart in Coney Island. He was born in 1822, and still thinks that’s a lot of money.

Karen can sense it, in the low-level way that she has become permanently aware of all the magic in this city – she can tap into it to make it stronger, like tuning a radio aerial, or turn it down until it’s nothing but a soft rush and sigh, but it never goes away entirely. At first it was like living next door to someone who had the TV just loud enough for you to hear it constantly, threatened to drive her crazy, but she’s gotten used to it. She’s seen faces glancing at her from crowds, faces never there when she looks again, who whisper _witch_ or _queen_ or _lady_ in a variety of languages, including several that she’s not sure she actually knows. It is two years since she became co-sovereign ruler of the underworld (New York’s, anyway) and she’s just returned from her six months down below. This is her least favorite part of the year while everyone else appreciates it the most, the end of frost and sleet and too-short days, the return of the sun and the buds on the trees, warm west winds and green-golden evenings. For the rest of this city, it’s the end of winter. But for Karen, it’s the start.

She has started to accept, more or less, that this is how the rest of her life will look – though she doesn’t know how long that life will be. Is she confined to one mortal span, or has she taken on immortality by osmosis, so that she too will exist indefinitely, turning each calendar and season in endless cycles? She’s still not sure she’s comfortable with that idea, a guaranteed and unshakable immunity from death, even as she, of course, helps oversee that very moment for everyone else. But Karen is definitely warming to her role. It’s a fuck-yeah I’m-the-Queen-of-the-Underworld power trip when you stride down the sidewalk and people get out of your goddamn way. Plus, there’s the satisfaction of ensuring just desserts. Rude bus driver or cat-calling construction worker got on your nerves? See you in hell, dickhead. _Literally._

And yet, Karen is struggling to reestablish roots in the human world, to remember why any of this matters. She’s changed in some way she can’t put her finger on, even as it is obvious that she would. She can’t for the life of her understand why humans spend so much time worried about the stupidest and most irrelevant things, when she’s seen them to their final destination, understood in broad sweeps and completed arcs, the immensity of the eternal and how little humanity ever faces it. For that matter, Karen doesn’t entirely classify herself as a human any more, even as she remembers Wilson Fisk saying that she couldn’t live among them forever. _Witch._ She wants to go to Josie’s and drink a beer with the boys like nothing’s changed, especially since they’ve been waiting patiently for her to get home ( _home?_ Is it?), but she stands there at her mirror, staring at herself, and cannot quite make out the edges of her own reflection. Whatever is in her soul, whatever she _is,_ is no longer entirely visible to mortal instruments.

Karen stands there, brush in her hand, until she shakes herself and finishes combing out her hair, twisting it and pinning it up. She shrugs on a white blouse and a blue empire skirt, heels and scarf, looking as much like old Karen as she can, since she knows it comforts Matt and Foggy. They can’t change it, and they gamely throw her going-away parties when she prepares to depart for the underworld in September, but she knows they can’t entirely reconcile it, wrap their heads around it. After all, it’s hard to swallow that your best friend is literally sleeping with death.

At that, Karen snorts, and looks down at her left hand. Technically, she’s not just shacking up with Death, she is joined in (un)holy matrimony with him. There’s not exactly a church ceremony to observe, but she wears a ring, there have been words spoken before the dark fountain that lies at the center of the underworld, and she’s not a long-term live-in girlfriend, not that there’s anything wrong with that, it being the twenty-first century and marriage being an antiquated social institution. She’s a queen, a wife, not an accessory or a concubine but someone with full authority in her own right, and she and Frank have overall accepted and referred to themselves as married. There’s definitely some (literally murderous?) irony in the fact that to find a decent guy with a steady job and a big dog who can afford his own spacious apartment in midtown Manhattan, you have to look among fell beings, but Karen isn’t complaining. Far from it. Stepping out of the boat upon her arrival in the 28th Street subway tunnel, which has become the usual port of call where she travels between the two dimensions of her existence, always feels like burying her heart in the dark earth. If you’re married, but you can only see your husband half the year – in fact, even one more repeat of the time at Curtis Hoyle’s deathbed, where they saw each other during the period of Karen’s exile, could get them into trouble – is that really a marriage? Binding magical contracts, kids. Don’t try them at home.

Karen spaces out again halfway through putting on her lipstick, has to wake up, and grabs her jacket, keys, and purse, stepping out into the blue-pink evening. It has taken a lot of fancy dancing to be able to keep her apartment. After all, letting a leasable property sit vacant for half the year is not any landlord’s favorite thing to do, especially in this market, and Karen still pays rent each month, though her money no longer comes from the firm. She made up some story about having to travel out of the country for work each winter, which she is aware makes her sound like a mob wife, but as long as the checks clear, they haven’t evicted her yet. It’s probably foolish to half-hope they will. It’s not like she can go back to Frank ahead of time.

Karen trots down the sidewalk, takes deep breaths, and tries to reorient herself in the here-and-now – vague smell of urine, people shoving past, cabs honking, groups of kids with their feet in the sidewalk, and all the other delights of New York City notwithstanding. She reaches Josie’s in a few more minutes, can hear the distant thump of the bass through the door, and pushes inside, glancing around for Foggy and Matt. They’re already at the bar, starting on a beer apiece, but they hurry to their feet as she moves nearer. “Hey!” Foggy says. “It’s the Queen of the Damned! How are the walking dead these days, anyway?”

“Same as ever.” Karen smiles, since it’s the usual banter and it’s, again, what they expect, as she kisses each of their cheeks and slides in on the empty stool. Josie cracks a cold one and passes it over, and Karen takes a sip. “I take it you two didn’t burn down the city while I was gone?”

“Nah,” Foggy says. “Not me. That one over there, though, who knows.”

Matt snorts. “If the city does burn,” he says, mildly enough, though with an edge to make clear he doesn’t regard this as a subject to joke about, “I’m not the one who starts it.”

There’s a slightly awkward silence. They’re still friends, of course. Best friends. But Karen, much as she loves Foggy, doesn’t want to be subjected to lame jokes about the undead at every reunion, even though she knows he isn’t sure what else to say to break the ice of her spending every six months incommunicado on another plane of existence, married to a demi-god who is a century-something old and running an operation that, to say the least, makes Matt uneasy. The knowledge that all the dearly departed (of the Big Apple, at any rate) go to Frank goddamn Castle to be sorted out, long before God or the Devil get any say, it’s. . . well, it’s not theologically comfortable for a devout Catholic boy, let’s put it that way. Karen has said that she doesn’t know where the saints or the sinners go, that the underworld is just a temporary waystation that everyone has to pass through, the Grand Central Station of the afterlife before they take their last train. Nothing about it outright _excludes_ the existence of the God that Matt has grown up believing in (even if not quite so much these days). But you definitely don’t go to Sunday school and learn about an immortal, reclusive ex-Marine with a gruff demeanor, foul mouth, and fondness for black coffee and hooded sweatshirts handing out tickets to your final judgment. If that’s the case, if there are any number of local gods and inexplicable forces, hedge magic or demonic entities alike, faith looks a lot like fiction.

“Well,” Foggy says, clearly trying to move the conversation along. “How’s – how’s Frank?” In apparent due consideration of the fact that this _is_ Karen’s husband, he refrains from employing any other of his varied and colorful nicknames.

“Frank’s fine.” Karen runs a finger along the neck of her beer bottle. She probably wasn’t going to say anything else, nor would Foggy expect it, but now the conversational formalities have been observed. She doesn’t think Foggy would really want to know that this parting in particular sucked for both of them, and it’s never going to get any easier. Doesn’t want to tell her friends that she’s starting to wonder how many times she can return to the human world and still care about it. That is stupid, though. She’s a grown-ass, independent woman and her life does not revolve around her romantic partner. But when your time in either world is always limited, it’s hard to put down any kind of roots, or commit to anything long-term, or think of it as anything except trading places. Six months here, six months there, on and on, is a really goddamn hard way to live. And if Karen has started to prefer the underworld, where her magic flourishes, where she’s respected and feared, where she has the man she loves with her – well. That’s understandable, perhaps. But she does not want to say it, nor make Foggy and Matt have to hear.

The three of them try to talk about other things. Foggy mentions the woman he’s seeing, some high-powered blonde lawyer named Marci, who, according to Matt, is way out of Foggy’s league, and who, according to Foggy, probably. Matt is politely evasive on the topic of whether there’s anyone special, says only not really, right now. But it’s clear that he’s chewing on something, and once they’re into the second beer, it finally bursts out. “Karen, are you sure there isn’t any way to break your curse?”

“What?” Karen looks at him, startled. _Curse_ is definitely overstating it – yes, she did eat six pomegranate seeds rather than die, and that means her yearly schedule is bifurcated for the foreseeable future as it presently is. As noted, she’s not really thrilled with all aspects of it either. But she also doesn’t want to give it up, especially not Frank. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Matt tries a casual shrug, but doesn’t really pull it off. “I mean,” he says, fingers tapping on the scarred wood of the bar, “with all the magic and the – other forces we’ve learned about, everything that’s out there, I was just thinking. You don’t have to live this way forever, do you? There has to be a way to make it stop.”

Karen opens her mouth, then shuts it. She almost wants to ask if Matt thinks he needs to save her from a monster, swoop in and free her from another bad guy’s clutches, if this is entirely altruistic, or if he has some sort of unresolved torch for her that might be served by such a suggestion. It’s bad form to break up a best friend’s relationship, especially well post-facto, so she definitely _hopes_ that isn’t what he means. But Matt probably just sees the situation as something she’s been unavoidably forced into, it’s clear that she’s not altogether happy, and he does care about her. She should give him the benefit of the doubt, assume it was a well-meant offer of help, and talk this through. So she says, “Why would we do that?”

“It just seems – ” Matt starts, stops, and seems to consider it. Then he goes on, “I just don’t think that this is something that will make you happy, long-term. It’s not fair to ask one person, one human, to move constantly between life and death for however many years, decades. Possibly even centuries, we don’t know. You don’t have a real home in either place. It’s not fair.”

Karen is about to answer, then stops. Matt is not wrong, as this is something that she obviously has been thinking about herself, and he’s also correct that it’s the hell of a burden, literally, to put on one person’s shoulders. But it’s more like she does have a real home in the underworld, and is unavoidably forced out of it for half the year, with no way of staying in touch until she returns. Other people are in long-distance relationships, but they have calls, texts, Skype, weekend visits, presents on holidays, little surprises, what have you. She can’t see Frank’s face again until fucking September, can’t call him, can’t hang around someone who might be about to kick the bucket in hopes that he’ll turn up, can’t have any physical contact or intimacy with her husband until she gets on that boat and sails down that subway tunnel, down the River Styx, into the dark, the quiet, the beauty, the peace. Returning from there is always a jolt. The real world is so. . . much. So loud and unfair and grimy and hung up on stupid shit and filled with small, broken, fallible people living small, broken, fallible lives. The witch blood does not wane. It only waxes, and the queen, of course, does not forget her crown.

“I don’t know,” Karen says at last. “It’s a lot to take in. But I just. . . it makes more sense for me to be there, sometimes, than it does to be here. Whoever I am there, _whatever_ , I feel more like myself. I can’t explain it. I don’t want to give that up.”

Foggy and Matt exchange a look. It’s not clear if this is a subject they’ve discussed before, if they were planning to bring it up at a later time, or if this was a can of worms that Matt opened, as is his wont, without consulting Foggy first. At last Foggy says, “You really want to live in Michael Jackson’s _Thriller_ forever?”

“I just – ” Karen pushes back her bar stool, almost an instinctive reaction, as if to clear space if she needs to run. “I don’t know if you understand this, I don’t know if you want to hear it, but I love him, all right? Frank. I love him, and I want us to be together. Maybe I wish that I didn’t _have_ to leave the underworld every six months. It’s – I’m not whoever I was, when we first met. That girl who was running from magic and was just trying to keep her head down and not be noticed. I’ve changed. It’s not like I’m trapped there. It’s not like you need to save me.”

Matt flinches, even as Foggy gives him a you-asked-for-it-buddy look. There is another, even more awkward silence, as they mutually strain for a topic of general interest. It’s hard to follow that up, though, and Foggy clears his throat. “I guess you’re probably tired after moving, again? We should let you get home and get some rest. See you at work on Monday?”

“Actually. . .” Talk about topics Karen was hoping to avoid. She has continued to work at the firm for her last few returns, out of a sense of loyalty to Foggy and Matt and because it’s something familiar, it makes her feel more rooted, it allows her to help people on this side of their final judgment, and because she doesn’t want to go looking for a new job where she’d have to explain her impossible living situation and expect them to be cool with her disappearing every winter without a trace. But she’s increasingly realizing that the Queen of the Underworld does not want to work as a secretary in a struggling neighborhood attorneys’ office forever, and while she hates to let her friends down, maybe this will be for the best. “I’ve actually been thinking. Maybe I should take a little time off from Nelson & Murdock.”

Matt and Foggy exchange another look. It’s Foggy who says, “Technically, you already do take a little time off from Nelson & Murdock. Every six months, every winter. Or did you mean something else? Something longer?”

“The. . . latter.” Now that she’s brought this up, they might as well have it out. Karen can’t quite meet their eyes. “I’m wondering if you should hire someone else. After all, it’s already not fair on you that I’m only there half the time.”

“We make it work,” Matt says, stoutly if perhaps slightly untruthfully. “We wouldn’t just throw you out, we’ll let you come back as long as you – ”

“I know.” The job there saved her life, literally, and Karen almost reconsiders – but not quite. “I know you wouldn’t just throw me out. But I don’t need the money, and. . .” She trails off. Finally she finishes, almost inaudibly, “It’s not what I do anymore.”

“Yeah, now you judge dead people.” Foggy’s trying to make a joke, as usual, but she can tell that he is stung by the implication that she, magical royalty, is now too good for association with the humble Muggle plebeians. Don’t forget your roots, everyone always says. Remember where you came from. Don’t go getting full of yourself once you hit the big time. If you ditch your friends once you’re famous, you’re setting up for misery. “Not a whole lot of that at the firm, no, but at least we try to stop them from ending up that way.”

“I know,” Karen says again. She reaches out as if to put her hand over his, but Foggy imperceptibly moves it away. “It’s just. . . like we were saying, it’s hard to keep moving back and forth, and I. . . I need some time to think about what I’m going to do.”

“If you do quit,” Matt says, “it feels like you’ll end up in some kind of trouble within two weeks. You’re not really the type for sitting in your apartment and doing nothing.”

“You should talk,” Karen shoots back. Dearly as she loves both of them, she is not about to be rebuked on this accord by goddamn Daredevil. “But nobody’s babysitting your work life.”

“If it helps,” Foggy says, “I honestly wouldn’t let him quit either.”

“All right, but neither of you can _let_ me.” Karen knows that’s not exactly what Foggy meant, but she feels as if the point could stand to be clarified anyway. “I make my own choices. And we can still be friends even if we don’t work together, remember? It’s not like that changes.”

“No,” Matt says, with a distinct edge. “Not right away. Not at least for another six months, and then you go back to play Halloween haunted house with a mass murderer.”

Karen’s cheeks burn as if he’s slapped her. She rears back – how _dare_ he say that, when he dresses up in a Halloween costume and runs around all the time, and as many good qualities as Matt Murdock has, being a hypocrite is not one of them. Foggy instinctively puts his hands to either side to separate them, gives Matt a very sharp look, and Matt has the grace to flush. “Sorry,” he says, trying to modulate his tone. “But it’s just – Karen – I – fine. I don’t like this.”

“No one asked you, did they?” Karen’s voice is very cool. “Actually. Yeah. I should be getting home, I think.”

It’s clear that none of them want to have an open argument, but also that deep and fundamental disagreements remain unresolved, and Karen air-kisses them farewell as she shrugs on her jacket and heads for the door. There is still some light in the western sky, the air is almost fresh after the dive-bar reek of Josie’s, and as she starts to walk, she finds her head turning after every guy in a sweatshirt who goes by. Not that Frank is going to be here, not when they might be breaking the rules if they so much as lay eyes on each other again before time (Karen struggles not to bitterly resent whoever set down the law of the pomegranate contract), not, not, _not._ God, she doesn’t know. Maybe Matt’s right. Maybe she should find a way to end this. At least set things up under her own terms, not due to some demented and divisive magical fruit.

She gets home, at last, to her empty apartment, her empty room, her empty bed. Kicks off her heels and skirt and blouse, lies down on top of the quilt, and does not sleep for a very long time.

 

**II.**

Karen spends the next few days looking for a new job. As noted, this is difficult for any number of reasons, she doesn’t want to trade in Nelson & Murdock just to end up in some other cubicle-farm nine-to-five snorefest, and she needs something with flexible hours and that does not ask too many questions. This again feels as if it will push her toward occupations of a certain monochrome, or at least very grey, moral nature, and while it’s not that per se that Karen objects to, she definitely does not want to actively hurt people. She already ended up in one mess with the Union Allied business, and is not game for a repeat. Any future employer does not need to be on the Vatican’s short list for canonization, but they also shouldn’t be a total scumbag.

She also does a lot of trolling Craigslist, which is skeezy by its very nature, since at least half the “help wanted” ads are clearly for, you know, _help,_ and anything that sounds _too_ good with _too_ flexible hours is either a Ponzi scheme or one of those “work from home for $750 an hour” internet-comment-spamming nuisances. She has a few years of college, but no degree, and while her experience isn’t bad – financial services, administration, law and paralegal work, community advocacy, professional stuff that at least will not get the Queen of the Underworld checking out stoners at Duane Reade or slinging lattes at Starbucks, and Karen can’t help but dread any background investigation. Like Matt said, she also attracts a certain amount of, well, you know. The stuff that hits the fan.

Idly, Karen wonders if she even needs to get another job. The money part has been sorted indefinitely; it appears in her account whenever she needs it, and she’s in her early thirties, but has never been out of the Northeast or New England very much. She should take advantage of her six months of summertime freedom and go travel, see the world, learn all about it. People from everywhere come to New York, live there, and therefore die there. She could help them if she knew more about their cultures, their homelands, their stories. Besides, it would stop her from sitting and doing nothing, bored out of her mind, just waiting to go under. It would be fun.

This spirit of adventure seizes Karen for the rest of the week, as she draws up bucket lists of places she has wanted to go (is _bucket list_ the right term here, since it’s for what you want to do before you die?) and googles flight prices and hotels and travel advice. She quickly books a two-week European trip – London, Paris, Berlin, Prague, Rome – even as part of her can’t help but find it more irritating than ever that despite being married, she has to go to all these romantic destinations as a singleton. But she’ll make do, and after a few moments, moved by an impulse she can’t quite explain, she adds a week in Athens to that itinerary. Greece is having a lot of problems right now – wildfires, financial crises, unemployment, protests – but Karen still wants to go. It feels like she might learn something interesting if she does.

This is a satisfying start, since she might not have a long-term answer yet, but at least she can take a vacation and mull it over, see if she has any ideas. Karen imagines that there is all kind of new (or rather, very old) magic in these places as well, and she’s curious about what she might discover. She starts packing, double-checks that her passport is in date, and on Sunday, heads out to the park to get some fresh air. She’s been feeling a little off, what with the stress and uncertainty and returning to life and eating regularly and all the other things it’s optional to do in the underworld (it always leaves your metabolism at least somewhat whacked). She does not want her big trip to be ruined, so maybe she’ll drop by the drugstore and pick something up.

That, however, does not seem necessary, as Karen feels better almost instantly once she’s strolling under the flowering trees, and wonders if it’s some intrinsic need in her, tied to her magic and her ability to make things grow. It’s slightly ironic, in her opinion, because she’s never felt like she has that effect – the opposite, in fact. But she raises a hand, letting a few sparks of magic trail out, and blooms burst profusely from the branch above. A young woman across the way stops, looks down at the path, and sees a $100 that someone must have dropped. Her jaw drops and she stares at it – it’s clear she needs it – but looks around dutifully for the owner. Seeing Karen as the only person nearby, she ventures over. “Ma’am, is this yours?”

“No,” Karen says. “I think you should keep it.”

The young woman looks at her gratefully but disbelievingly, and has to be extensively persuaded to accept it, which she finally does, almost in tears. Karen watches her go, can sense a burden lifted from her shoulders, and thinks that she really needs to look into using magic to help people more. She can’t make an unlimited rain of Benjamins fall from the sky – she wasn’t even intending for it to happen that time, and besides, magic can’t completely supersede physical or material or social or economic laws, can’t crash the Fed with billions of unexplained dollars, tempting as it might be. It still has to work in essential harmony with its environment and the existing limitations, even it allows for many more possibilities. Just needs to open them up, access the potential, the different outcomes, and –

“Excuse me. Are you Miss Page?”

Karen starts considerably, since she wasn’t expecting to see anyone – she and Foggy have exchanged text messages assuring the other that it’s totally fine, talk soon, no hard feelings, so on – and has a brief question as to whether it is in fact _Mrs. Castle._ (Technically _my lady,_ but that is definitely too hard to explain). She hasn’t changed her name or obtained any legal document from the New York County Clerk and Recorder’s Office, but she’s not _Miss Page,_ not really. Still, this is recognizable as being addressed to her, and she turns around. “Beg your pardon?”

The man standing a few feet away gives a deferential smile, as in apology for startling her. He’s middle-aged, bald, and white, wearing a long black wool overcoat and sunglasses, and since the last middle-aged bald white man who approached her wanting to talk, and called her _Miss Page,_ was Wilson Fisk, Karen is instantly on guard. “Help you?”

“I’m sorry,” he says. He has a practiced, reassuring tone, a smooth politician’s patter, that she doesn’t know whether to trust or not. “I promise, I am not here to hurt you. Can you confirm that you are indeed Karen Page? Just for security purposes.”

“Security purposes?” Karen remains where she is, tempted to ask for a badge or official ID or something else of the sort. He’s not fey, at least; this one is thoroughly human, for better or worse, and definitely not a demon like Fisk. “What’s this about?”

He smiles again, but with a small, prompting nod meaning he can’t say more until she jumps his hoops. If nothing else, she does want to know what’s going on. “Fine, yes, I am Karen Page. And you are – ?”

“I’m a friend.” He holds out both patent-leather-gloved hands, then unbuttons his coat – not to flash her, thankfully, but to demonstrate the lack of any high-powered automatic weapons concealed inside. He’s wearing a suit and tie, looks corporate of some sort, or maybe military. “For the time being, you can call me Agent Orange. I know it’s a bit cloak-and-dagger, but it’s for everyone’s benefit. Do you have a moment to talk?”

Karen wonders if you can turn down an offer like that from someone named Agent Orange, and expect that your life will go on hunky-dory, but then, her life is not like those of other people. “How did you know who I was?”

“We know things about people, Miss Page. It’s our job. Especially talented people, like you.” He nods at the branch above them, still uncurling blossoms in profusion. “So…?”

“Wait.” Karen knows, she thinks, what is going on here. “Are you from S.H.I.E.L.D.? Or whatever – whatever they’re calling themselves these days? The Avengers?”

“I do work for the government, yes,” Agent Orange acknowledges, as if that is probably obvious enough at this point not to bother denying it. “And some of the tasks I’m looking into have some operational similarities, but I’m not with S.H.I.E.L.D. We’re a bit more… central, and we have different concerns. You could help us.”

“Help you?” Karen repeats, polite but still dubious. “Do what?”

“Protecting this.” Agent Orange waves a hand at the bustling park, filled with playing kids, strolling couples, hot dog vendors and balloon-animal artists, the zoo and the carousel and all the other installments of good family fun. “Being the reason the American people get to wake up safe in their beds every morning, especially those in New York. Let’s be honest, Miss Page. This city was attacked by aliens, less than a decade ago. _Aliens,_ led by some kind of renegade trickster god from a higher dimension. We have no goddamn idea what we’re up against, and these kind of invasions aren’t going to stop. We’re losing the arms race, we’re flying totally blind. We need individuals with… special skills, like yours, outside the ordinary remit.”

Karen eyes him, not sure how to respond. This, obviously, is a subject on which she does have extensive personal experience, though in the exact opposite direction – she deals with New Yorkers once they’re dead, after all, and may be contractually forbidden from trying to intervene too much to the contrary, since whenever their number is up, it’s up. But this guy clearly knows _something,_ and she might as well find out what. Bluntly she says, “So you know I’m a witch?”

“I do, yes.” He shrugs, not quite apologetically. “We did have to vet you before I made a close approach. The other witch we were hoping to recruit, that Maximoff woman, well, the Avengers did get to her first. But I think you’d like working for us much more anyway.”

“Wait, so that’s already what’s on the table? A job offer?” Karen almost wonders if they were tapping her phone, spying on her internet traffic, knew that she was searching for new employment and decided the time was right to swoop in with a golden goose. It’s not worth asking how the government knows anything about you, but still. “What if I say no?”

“Then you say no, of course.” He sounds as if he’s mildly hurt that she’d have to ask at all, when he clearly has nothing but good intentions here. He reaches into his pocket, removes a small chrome case, and clicks it open, removing a business card. “But if you want to think about it?”

Karen takes it and looks down. It’s a phone number with a D.C. area code, no name. She does want to know, admittedly, and she _was_ just thinking about using magic to help people, not that she’s nearly naïve enough to think that that alone would be innocently on the agenda here. He wants something from her, wants her power, possibly the same way Wilson Fisk did – to serve and suit himself, or something much larger. Finally she asks, “Am I the only person you’ve approached about this?”

“No. We do have other witches working for us.” Agent Orange puts his head to the side and regards her critically. “You’ve never met anyone else like you, have you?”

Karen doesn’t answer, because it’s true. She knows that other witches exist, of course, but she’s never actually met one, much less had a coven or a community. Matt and Foggy have been her people, pretty much the only friends she’s made long-term in New York, but they can’t do anything like this. If she met other witches, other women, who might be able to tell her more about who she is, who might have ideas about how to break the pomegranate contract, teach her new magic… and apart from that, even just having friends, people to make the separations easier, who might understand her unique predicament… it’s tempting. Badly so. She wishes it wasn’t, since she still doesn’t really trust this smooth-talking snake-oil salesman, but it is.

“We value strong women,” Agent Orange presses, sensing that she might be weakening. “They’d welcome you with open arms. You’d be doing exciting, meaningful – and, might I add, very well-compensated work. Shall I schedule an appointment for you, next week?”

Karen hesitates. “I was actually about to be out of the country. I had a trip planned.”

“You’re welcome to go, of course,” Agent Orange says. “But, well, our next intake won’t be for many months, and we might have filled positions. I can’t guarantee this opportunity will come again. We’re happy to reimburse you for any cancelled travel arrangements.”

Dangerously, Karen can feel herself actually considering it. She does need something new to do, and if this guy is in fact up to no good, maybe she can find that out. But she has an almost desperate need now, to meet these other witches, and hope that they actually exist and are not just this guy saying anything that he thinks she’ll believe. “Where should I meet you?”

He clicks open the case and hands her another card. It’s an address in Westchester, near Yonkers. “Wednesday at noon? We’re looking forward to having you meet the team.”

Karen wonders just how long they’ve been planning this, if Orange is putting the full-court press on her now, and thinks that whoever he actually works for, they must have a high opinion of her abilities indeed. But wait, they don’t know about Frank, do they? Think that if they could recruit the wife of the Lord of the Dead, they could bribe or blackmail him into actively killing people again, rather than just waiting for them to die? He was more than notorious for that while he was alive, mowing down all the people responsible for his family’s deaths soon after the end of World War II, but – no. They can’t know about him for sure, or know what he is. That was in 1948, and as far as Karen knows, the only living soul apart from her that Frank ever told, his Marine buddy Curtis Hoyle, is now dead. Curtis wouldn’t betray Frank. They don’t know.

Still, though. She’s going to need to keep her head up and her eyes open, and she flashes a bland smile at Orange as she takes the card. “I think that could be managed.”

“Wise choice, Miss Page.” He gives her the same kind of smile back. “Go ahead and cancel your bookings, then. A refund for the full amount should appear in your account within forty-eight hours. I look forward to seeing you on Wednesday.”

With that, he strides off through the park, scattering pigeons, as Karen still isn’t entirely sure what she’s just agreed to. At last she collects herself, heads back to her apartment, and opens up her laptop to cancel the trip. Maybe it’s for the best, and if she’s now immortal, she’ll have all the time in the world to go back (you know, if all of civilization doesn’t collapse and/or destroy the planet in our lifetime, which feels like a pessimistic but real possibility). Once it’s done, she also wonders if she should text Matt and Foggy, in an if-I-don’t-make-contact-please-call-someone kind of way, but she also isn’t entirely in the mood for how they, especially Matt, would take this news. She doesn’t want to be monitored and second-guessed, probably have him come crashing in and get himself into trouble too, and whatever is going on here, she is, after all, someone pretty important and powerful in her own right. She can work it out.

Karen spends Monday and Tuesday wondering if she should make any special preparations or whatever, then on Tuesday night, lays out her clothes and sets her alarm. She doesn’t know what you wear to this kind of job interview, but figures it’s probably the same as most of the others. She pauses, wondering if she should take her gun, but she has other ways to defend herself now, and doesn’t want to look like she’s immediately expecting a crisis situation. Later, maybe, but not right off the bat. Besides, they might give her hassle.

Karen wakes up the next morning, showers and dresses and grabs breakfast, then heads to Grand Central and buys a ticket on the Metro-North. It’s about half an hour on the train out of the city into the well-groomed, affluent, green suburbs of Westchester, and she gets off at Bronxville and walks the ten minutes to the indicated address. It’s a nice house, neo-Victorian, grey stone and turrets and a large wooden front door, and looks no different from the other handsome mansions in this tree-lined part of town. If this is the secret lair of a nefarious cabal of corporate evildoers, at least they have good taste.

Karen knocks, waits, and after a few moments, the door is opened by a member of staff, who seems to know who she is, welcomes her inside, and offers to take her coat. They then show her through the house to a large, bay-windowed parlor, which looks on the impeccably kept back lawn of all suburbanites’ dreams. Agent Orange is sitting on a sofa, and a woman is sitting across from him. She’s petite, elegant, dark-haired, with a sly, demure smile and an edge like a well-honed knife, and she looks up as Karen stalls in the doorway. “You will be Miss Page?”

Karen can detect an accent from somewhere, though she can’t place it, and nods awkwardly, feeling distinctly like the first day of high school and walking into the classroom with the popular girls. “Yes. Hello, ah – ”

The woman considers her, as if deciding what answer to give. Then she throws out her hand, in a brief, careless motion. “My name is Elektra. Elektra Natchios. How nice to meet you.”

Karen shakes it, can feel the strong crimson-black curtain of magic that weaves and darts and swirls around the other woman like a burning aurora, and knows at once that this is another witch – and a formidably powerful one, who should be toyed or tested at one’s own peril. In turn, Elektra can surely feel Karen’s own current, green and gold and blossoming yet touched with the white winter of the underworld, and she raises an eyebrow, then smiles, revealing a slightly sharp canine. “Oh, this _will_ be interesting. So fresh. Always fun. William?”

Agent Orange – whose name, real or otherwise, is evidently William – gives Elektra a look, but does not openly object to her blowing him. He gets to his feet and comes to shake Karen’s hand in turn, mouthing pleasantries. He offers her tea or coffee, Karen takes coffee, and they perch back down on the striped-silk sofas, Elektra patting the cushions to indicate Karen to sit with her. Despite her clear sense of the witch’s danger, Karen is fascinated by her. She has never seen someone so steeped in magic, so casual and confident and lethal with it. Elektra does not even do it consciously, or to show off, though there is certainly an element of prideful, arrogant display, a steel-edged bite to polished charm school manners. She simply _is_ it. There is no one without the other, no division possible. She does whatever she pleases, and hang the consequences.

Refreshments sorted, they talk shop. Karen’s surprised that Orange hasn’t outright handed her an NDA, but either this is some implicit sign that they trust her or it’s just understood that Elektra will probably kill her if she says anything. Maybe there are other ways to ensure her silence, or maybe it’s just the case that nobody would believe her. What they’re talking about is certainly off the ranch, but not more than the rest of Karen’s life anyway. The outfit that Orange currently runs, some private subcontract from the DoD, is called Kronos. It’s designed to protect America’s interests by the selective deployment of high-skilled individuals to key strategic locations. There, they have full discretion how to solve the problem, retrieve the intelligence, or accomplish the objective. (Yes, this entire sales pitch is absolutely brimful with slick corporate jargon.) In other words, though neither Orange nor Elektra explicitly spell it out, a magical military espionage and counterintelligence strike unit. Orange laughs and says that while he himself is about as magical as dirt, he is not a man to forsake a tactical advantage, especially in a dynamic emerging field like this one. There are witches, wizards, and other magical professionals employed by foreign governments, America does not want to fall behind, and Orange is trying to set up a proactive response. China, for example. He’s especially worried about China. Elektra smiles like a cat in cream when he says this.

Karen listens without saying much, trying to wrap her head around it. She is increasingly sure that yeah, there’s no way these people are on the up-and-up, but she’s still intrigued by the extent of the magical world, and its practical applications. You’d hope it’s not solely for unscrupulous governments and corporations undercutting each other, though it wouldn’t be surprising if so because late-stage capitalism is a nightmare and democracy is an illusion, but still. She isn’t about to sign up on the spot, no questions asked, and glances sidelong at Elektra. “How long have you done this job?”

“A while.” Elektra shrugs. “You really should try it.”

“Why do you do it?”

“Because I like money,” Elektra says. “And magic. And seeing the world. And hurting people who deserve it, most of the time. What would keep you back?” Her eyes flick to Karen’s left hand. “Your husband? He could be dealt with.”

Orange’s eyes sharpen. It’s clear that he didn’t take notice of the ring until Elektra pointed it out, and is now kicking himself for not catching it sooner – a man who works in intelligence can’t afford these kind of oversights. “Are you married, Miss Page?” he asks, voice lingering over the _Miss_ in a tone no longer certain if that is the correct title. “It wasn’t in your file.”

Karen thinks that they could _pretend_ they haven’t been culling her personal information every which way, but you have to almost admire them for not giving a fuck. It’s hard to explain why she’s wearing a ring if she’s not at least engaged, though she is wary of mentioning Frank. They’re both looking at her expectantly, however, and she doesn’t have a good lie on short notice. “I – yes, I am. My husband’s out of the country. For work. I can’t say that much.”

“So he’s also in this business?” Orange asks, with the expression of a man wondering if he’s getting two for the price of one. “And it wouldn’t be Miss Page, it would be Mrs. – ?”

“I didn’t change my name,” Karen says, rankled that it would still be automatically expected of a woman. “I’m sure you would know that? Since you have a _file._ ”

Orange smiles faintly, conceding the point. Still, he’s not ready to let it go altogether. “Your marriage wasn’t in there. It could be mistaken. Are there any other corrections we should know about? Just, of course, for thoroughness.”

“Like I said. I can’t say much.” Karen smiles back, closed-mouthed. “Either way, he wouldn’t be an influence on my decision.” Of course he wouldn’t be. As far as this is concerned, Frank might as well live on Mars, and it makes her heart hurt. Any other person in this position would go home, talk to their spouse about it, decide exactly how shady it sounded, or if they could legitimately back out. Orange has said that she can, but Karen isn’t sure.

There’s a brief pause as they sip their various beverages, and Karen tries to decide how much they’d tell her, if she asked directly. However, there’s only one way to find out. “So this – this Kronos. It’s not some kind of. . . illicit private hit squad, is it? Extralegal witch black ops? Because with all due respect, I’m not sure I want to be part of that.”

“Kronos is run in full compliance with all relevant rules and regulations,” Orange says – which is an impressively weaselly answer, since it sounds good without ever defining rules and regulations as relevant to who. Could be entirely their own. “And we wouldn’t ask you to do something if we weren’t both confident you could carry it out.”

“Thanks,” Karen says. “But I used to work at a law firm. I’m aware that rules, especially for companies like this, aren’t exactly written with the best interests of everyone in mind.”

“Would that bother you?” Orange inspects her with his unsettlingly pale eyes. “You killed the demon Wilson Fisk. We’d have more assignments in that vein. People – _things_ – who want to hurt us, destroy our way of life. Creatures that are not worth your sympathy or your very well-meant intentions. If you want to help us, then – ”

He’s likely set to go on, but just then, Elektra leans forward. “You worked for a law firm?” she asks, light and offhand. “In New York? Which one?”

Karen is tempted to answer that it’s probably in her file too, but maybe only Orange has access to that, and part of her has to admit that maybe Matt should in fact know about these people, however indirectly. “Nelson & Murdock.”

A very odd expression crosses Elektra’s face. _“Matthew?_ You know Matthew?”

“Yes.” Karen is startled that Matt knows _her –_ as well as wondering if there’s a good reason if Matt, once he learned that Karen herself was a witch, never mentioned that he knew another one. Unless, of course, he somehow doesn’t know that Elektra is one, but for someone as perceptive as Matt, that is very unlikely. Orange is watching both of them closely, taking note of this unexpected connection, and Elektra does not appear inclined to pursue it in front of him. However, there is no doubt that she is now very interested in Karen and whatever link she has to Matt, and that she likewise will not just wave at Karen and wish her a nice day. There is once again a pause in the conversation, everyone trying to think how to press their advantage, when they’re interrupted by a sound at the door. A man’s voice, New York-accented, apparently casual, says, “You doin’ interviews without me, huh? You know I like to be part of ‘em.”

Everyone glances over to see the newcomer: slick, stylish, handsome to the point of prettiness, coiffed dark hair and artisan stubble, wearing a tailored suit with a flashy Rolex on his wrist. This is clearly a man who also enjoys his money, and for a split second, it’s not clear that Orange was entirely expecting to see him. For that same second, Karen thinks she might almost detect a trace of fear. Then Orange gets to his feet and nods cordially. “Miss – Page, this is the chairman and CEO of Kronos. Any more questions about our outfit, you’d want to talk to him.”

“Oh?” Karen doesn’t know what it is exactly, but if Orange is at least thoroughly and banally human, this man very much is not. In fact, the closest thing he feels like is – well. Like Frank. “And you are?”

He takes her offered hand and half-bows over it, something that’s clearly supposed to be charming. For most women, it probably is. “Billy Russo. At your service.”

 

**III.**

Frank Castle – Lord of the Dead, master of the underworld, judge of all departed souls (at least the ones from New York, Bronx, Kings, Queens, Richmond, Nassau, or Suffolk counties) and dread demiurge of the subterranean realm – really goddamn misses his wife.

It’s strange, getting used to that idea again, having it to hold in his heart and his head. He’s married again, he’s actually fuckin’ married. Sometimes it almost makes him laugh, makes him want to run up to one of the nearby dead people and tell them, not like they’d give a shit. They’re dead, they’ve got bigger problems. But over seventy years after he lost Maria (not that it’s felt like seventy years – sometimes like centuries and sometimes like weeks, time just doesn’t work normally down here), he has a wife again, and it’s _Karen,_ and Christ, he doesn’t know how to stand it sometimes, loving her. He, to say the goddamn least, was not ever expecting to have another chance at this, but through the long strange journey that has been his life, he has. And, perhaps fittingly, has to lose her in some part, over and over. Pay the price in parts and pieces, rather than all at once, but he pays it nonetheless.

At least he has the job to go back to, like he’s had all along, but it’s like when you’ve been married a couple years, you go out for a night on the town with your knucklehead single friends and you have a good time, but you get home and you realize that wow, those guys are _dicks_ , the way they look at women, the way they talk to them, and you no longer have as much in common with them. You kind of hope you never fuckin’ did, really, but you know that yeah, you were once that stupid, and you were lucky this amazing woman took pity on you. Of course, Frank’s current situation didn’t shape up quite like that, but he’s gotten used to not being alone. He likes it when Karen’s there, their life together, them working at this thankless goddamn job and making the beauty that they can. More than _likes_ , much more. He would die for it again, if it was possible. Whenever she leaves for her six-month exile, he’s thrown into a spiral of aimless anger and bad temper and solitude, wanders the dark paths and the endless tunnels, lets the souls stack up in their boats and is a little more ruthless about sending them on when he gets back. Without Karen there, it just seems hard, and hollow, and he no longer remembers how to face it.

Frank also needs to be careful of his old habit of going for a walk up in the human world when it just got too isolating, even for him, to hang out alone down here. If whoever keeps track of magical contracts (some infernal accounting department?) got wind of him apparently trying to cheat and see Karen again while she’s in Overworld, that could. . . well, it could fuck things up real good, not that the consequences have ever been clearly spelled out, because why the goddamn hell would anyone give you an employee manual for this job. But in any case, no more freebies, not like with Curtis. That doesn’t mean Frank is totally under house arrest. He can still leave and go up to collect a soul in person, if he wants to. Just means he can’t see his own wife while he does it. Not a problem he anticipated having when he took over, since his wife was dead. But now it’s seeping into everything, darkening his mood, making him more dangerous, and equally annoyed with himself. Jesus. Karen probably is relieved to get back to goddamn civilization, to takeout and the Internet and whatever shit people like these days. He has lived seventy years without her. He can manage it every six months. He has to.

(And yet, capable as he knows she is without him, he feels far less so without her, and then he wonders for whom it is the greater punishment, the curse of the six seeds. Maybe she is happy to go. He doesn’t _think_ she was, and yet, the habits of solitude and suspicion are not easily broken.)

Today, however, Frank has woken up in more of a sour mood than usual, and doesn’t want to get up and go to goddamn work – relatable, especially when your job is dealing with dead dickheads. Strictly speaking, he doesn’t _need_ sleep, but he gets into the habit whenever Karen’s here, and as he sits up in their bed, he glances over reflexively, just in case time has acted out of proportion again, the six months are up, and she’s home. She’s not. Fuckin’ figures.

Frank gets up, grumbling under his breath, and dresses. He heads out, rubbing his scratchy chin – he stays a little mortal for a while after she’s gone, and probably looks like a bum, which is surprising to the huddled hordes awaiting their passage onward. Generally speaking, they go one of three places. Elysium (or heaven, if you want to call it that; Frank doesn’t know who lives there), for the virtuous and deserving. The Asphodel Meadows, the medium place, for people who aren’t great but weren’t shit either. And lastly Tartarus (or hell), the depthless abyss of eternal torment, sweeping the bad people down the river Phlegethon, the river of fire, to their unhappy fate. Frank still thinks it’s a joke that he, not what you’d ever call a people person, has taken on this job, but that was what it took for revenge on Billy, and he has to live with that. You know, here in the realm of the goddamn dead. Irony.

He leaves the palace and walks down into the fields, which glow with a ghost of pale moonlight and bloom with black flowers that breathe of sleep. The river Lethe is not far from here, running with a soft, enticing sound, and if you drink it, you begin to forget your mortal life. If, that is, you’re an ordinary human. In the first few years he was down here alone, Frank must have drunk that shit like a six-pack, but while it did help him get through a few of the worst nights, helped him sleep, it never gave him the soft solace of oblivion, not permanently. Hades finds no rest in his own realm. It is his curse to remain forever awake, feared and hated by gods and mortals, when he simply _is,_ neither benevolent nor wicked, a simple, unchanged, elemental force. Death always must come. It is natural, no one denies this. It is, however, no friend, not to a creature who knows they must, when that race to escape its clutches lies at the heart of all living. _Timor mortis conturbat me_. And yet. Any human walks up to the very edge of a cliff and stares out, there will be a part of them tempted to jump. Doesn’t matter how happy they are, doesn’t matter if they’ve never had that kind of thought in their life. It’s still there, primal, the temptation to step off, to see if they could fly, even as they know they would fall, and break, and end. It’s hard to understand the sheer permanence of not-being. No one can wrap their head around it, so much that they think there’s a chance, no matter how far the plunge, that they would live. It’s only when it’s far too late that you know there is no help coming, and you must face the pain and the dark and the culmination. Frank speaks from experience. He is not dead, but he died, long ago.

He reaches the foot of the fields and looks out at the boats starting to come in. There are other entities who could do the judging, and he could let them. Maybe it’s better for them today if he doesn’t. Probably just throw the lot of them on the river of fire, and that’s not his job, that’s not who he is. They deserve a chance to be reckoned fairly, for the life they have lived and not his frustrated heartbreak, and he pauses, then turns. The judges can have this lot. He’ll go below.

Frank turns his back, and walks out of the populated precincts of the underworld, away from the souls and the shadow of the boatman and the ghosts of hunger and dreams and guilt and grief, out into the wilds where the fragmented, unconscious depths of all the dead gone by still linger. The ruin and the wrack, the memory of a man from the eighth century, looking up at the stars, might suddenly pass you by, and you see it now as he did then. All the things that humanity has ever been or done or known are down here somewhere, if you could only find them.

After a while, Frank reaches the fountain at the center of the underworld that runs with the clearest waters and draws on the deepest spring, the place where he and Karen got married, since apart from all the war and blood and death that has to come down here, the love and the kindness and the sweetness has to as well, the small light that burns even in the darkest places. That’s what this is, and he comes here when he wants to feel closest to her. He steps up and stares down at his wavering reflection, gripping the edge so hard that the stone almost bends. If he doesn’t, he might jump in and hope he surfaced in Central Park somewhere, with the sunlight pouring down and the mortal world sprung back into color around him, take a real breath, walk hand-in-hand with his wife. He misses. He _misses._

As Frank stands there, staring down into the well of loneliness, something happens. The surface shimmers with eerie pearlescent light, vague and misty, and then all at once, he sees Karen’s face. It’s like looking into a mirror fogged over after a shower, not entirely clear, but it’s definitely her. Looks like she’s dressed for some kind of business interview, which Frank struggles not to let twist at his gut – of course, his girl, she’s gotta go out there, live her life, she’s going to go new places and meet people, talk to them, talk to –

And then he sees who – sees _what –_ Karen is in fact talking to, and his entire world freezes.

“Wh…” Frank can’t quite get it out. He can feel himself starting to panic, hammering both hands on the rim of the fountain, as if she can hear him, as if he can send some kind of fuckin’ astral warning from here. “No. No. Son of a bitch, no! You can’t – no. Karen, get away from him, get away. Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ, fuckin’ – get away from her, you piece of shit! Get away!”

The water ripples serenely, oblivious to his terror, as Frank jerks back, runs both hands over his head, swears violently, and slams his fist down on the stone, sending a splinter fracturing through it. Maybe it’s some kind of trick, since you can see has-beens and never-weres down here, things that haven’t really happened and won’t, but he knows instinctively that it’s not. That means his wife is standing up there in the mortal realm, standing face to face with Bill, with Billy goddamn Russo, who – the last time Frank had anything to do with him – was being hurled violently into the depths of Tartarus. The prison forged at the dawn of time to hold the Titans, the only place where his suffering would be slow and terrible and permanent enough to pay back what he had done, betraying Frank and Maria and the kids. To say the _goddamn_ least, if Billy has literally crawled out of hell, has refashioned himself into something even more terrible than he was before, if he’s up there, he’s _up there with Karen,_ and history is going to goddamn Jesus Christ fucking repeat itself, and Frank is trapped down here, helpless –

After a moment, he whirls away, possessed of a mad impulse to travel down the Phlegethon to Tartarus himself and see if Billy’s still there. He’s never been – he stood on the edge of the cliff and threw off his former best friend, the guy who made it through the hell of the Pacific with him, then arranged for his wife and his son and his little girl to be murdered back home. Like Frank said, he knows about standing on the brink and being tempted to jump. Knows too well. But even for Hades, Tartarus is not a place ventured lightly. If it could hold the Titans, it could hold a mere god. Venture into the depths of his own nightmares, and he might never come out.

Grimly, Frank wonders yet again how a kid from fuckin’ Long Island, born and raised in a salt-of-the-earth Italian Catholic neighborhood, poor enough they had to stuff newspapers in the clapboard during winter, trudge back and forth to pick coal, ended up in this line of work. His father died in the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918, and his mother couldn’t really control him after that, especially after she remarried to some local bricklayer with hands like hammers, who was supposed to keep little Frankie under rein. His stepfather hit, in other words, and Frank hit the fuck back, especially when that hitting started to be turned against his mother. He’d never held a gun when he enlisted at eighteen, but he wasn’t any stranger to fighting.

Frank barely looks left or right as he storms away from the fountain and toward the mouth of Phlegethon. It looks appropriately hellish, glowing with infernal orange light from the flames that lick the rusted iron of another empty subway track, leading Below. This is Billy’s fault, like the rest of it, that he’s here. Billy did something terrible in order to take on the power of Ares, god of war. Probably fuckin’ outright killed the last one. That’s why Frank went looking for some way to match him, to become the god of death, and that was how a couple of working-class jarhead stiffs from New York ended up battling it out in an immortal ultimate-stakes cage match, Hades and Ares, until one of them went over the edge into the abyss and didn’t come back. At least, he didn’t before. To say the least, if Billy is inclined to even more spectacular vengeance, he has the perfect, gift-wrapped opportunity to wreck Frank’s life again, to kill his wife, to take away everything and everyone he cares about. This time, for all eternity.

He has to go down to Tartarus, Frank thinks numbly. He has to be sure. If the chains are broken, if the prison is empty, then he knows for certain that that wasn’t some trick, and that Billy Russo, the name by which the god of war is currently calling himself, literally hell-bent on destroying the world and one witch with it, is once more walking the realm of the living… well. Frank doesn’t know what he’s going to do next, exactly. But it sure as shit is not to sit here on his ass and obey the rules. If he’s not careful, Karen could die for real, for good. But she definitely will if he lets Billy have free rein at her, if Billy doesn’t already know who she is, and that is the one thing Frank Castle, in any incarnation, cannot stand and survive.

Frank hesitates a long moment, unaccountably apprehensive. As noted, he has never traveled personally to Tartarus, though he’s sent a lot of assholes in this direction, and he knows the theory of it, at least. Makes the same gesture that he uses to summon the boat to travel along the Styx, and feels it like having to push through thick, sluggish mud, slow and unresponsive. He does it again, harder and more impatiently, until at last, his vessel appears. It’s slender and black, absurdly fragile-looking among the glowing lava, and he can’t entirely trust that it won’t break apart. Maybe that’s the point. You should never be easy or comfortable about this voyage. Not even if you are the Lord of the Dead yourself.

Frank clenches his fists, sets his jaw, and steps down into the boat. The eager, dancing tongues of Phlegethon’s fire lick his face, making him squint among the blowing soot and embers. Then he pushes off from the bank, and moves into the current, as the true heart of darkness yawns open before him. The old subway tracks bend and melt, the tunnel slopes down, down, down, and the master of the underworld vanishes into the deep.

 

**IV.**

Karen leaves the meeting with the shaken sense that she might have dodged a major bullet. There were obviously certain sketchy elements that she was aware of going in, but even Orange and his gang of magical-mercenary witches can’t hold a candle to what she’s just learned. Billy Russo – she knows that name. It came up in her last visit to Curtis Hoyle, just before Frank arrived to carry his old friend gently away into the good night. Curtis never spoke about Billy directly, but it was clear that he played some kind of part in the reason Frank took up the mantle of the underworld, and that Billy had betrayed him, betrayed both of them somehow. They were friends, best friends, until they weren’t. If this is the same Billy Russo, if he’s likewise alive and immortal, he might have the same kind of powers that Frank does, or worse. And he, obviously, is not confined to the underworld, or by the rules that separate Frank and Karen for half the year. Karen is an appreciably powerful witch by now, but this is a different kind of threat.

She is terse and distracted as she takes the Metro-North home, with a distinct feeling that even if she was somehow going to get away with refusing Orange, she might not be as lucky with Billy. Once again, there is a statistical possibility, however remote, that it’s another guy, but Karen has pretty much ruled that out. She felt whatever he is, and it’s strong and dark and terrible.

She gets home, puts in the deadbolt and jumps at small noises, then opens up her laptop and does some research. Unlike Frank, where she found his Wikipedia page and reference to his service record right away, Billy is considerably more obscure. There’s no one document that mentions him, at least none that Karen is finding with a preliminary trawl through Google and a couple of full-text newspaper archives. If he was a contemporary of Frank’s, he would probably have been born around the same time, right? Give or take a few years? You need to pay subscription fees to most newspapers if you want to access their back catalogue, and Karen doesn’t know exactly what she’d be looking for. Like any human publication is just going to casually drop in a line or two about what kind of eldritch being he might have turned into.

Karen guesses that if Frank was in the Marines during WWII, there’s a chance Billy was too, and searches every combination of “Bill/Billy/Will/William/Liam Russo” she can think of, until she finally returns a hit for a Russo, William J. USMC, years of service 1940–45, reached the rank of lieutenant, some of the same Pacific battlefields that she knows Frank was in. There’s no picture, but this is the beginning of a match at least, and Karen makes a list of every newspaper in New York that might have run a birth (or death) notice. At last, as it’s going onto the wee hours, her head is heavy, and her eyes are scratched and bleary with exhaustion, she stumbles over a small notice in a grainy scanned PDF of the December 31, 1913 issue of the _Times-Union,_ from Albany. A baby abandoned at a fire station with a note pinned to his blanket saying that his name was William James Russo. The child’s parents, presumably a Mr. and/or Mrs. (or _Miss –_ an unmarried young woman might well give up her baby rather than face social scandal) Russo, are appealed to come forward as a matter of urgency. It doesn’t look like they did.

Karen stares at the glowing screen until her eyes cross. She prints out a copy of everything that looks relevant, puts it in a folder, and decides that she should probably get at least a few hours of sleep, which she does. Then she wakes up, showers, grabs the file, and heads downtown.

Mitchell Ellison, the editor of the _New York Bulletin_ and the man who gave Karen her lead to Curtis when she was investigating Frank, is – to say the least – somewhat surprised to see her turn up again, two years later, with another bone to gnaw. They’ve been in sporadic email contact, so it isn’t totally out of the blue, but she can sense that he is, forgivably, a little baffled. “You did all this?” he says, paging through her printouts. “This is good research, Karen. You’ve clearly got a journalist’s instincts. You ever thought about working in this industry?”

“I. . .” Karen has, once or twice, but everyone keeps saying it’s a dying field and there’s no future and so on and so forth. “I am sort of between jobs right now, but it’s. . . complicated.”

“We have an opening in the newsroom right now, actually.” Ellison continues to consider her. “One of our junior staff writers left last week. Would you at least want to interview?”

“I can’t really commit to a job long-term.” Karen debates how to possibly explain that she shuffles off the mortal coil every half a year to return to her husband, who just so happens to be the guy she was here to ask Ellison about last time. “It’s. . . complicated.”

Ellison squints at her, decides that this may not be his business, and looks back down at her scanty records of Billy Russo. “So what do you want with him?”

“I was just wondering if you came across anything about him, when you were investigating Castle.” Karen tries to keep her tone light. “It seems like they have – I mean, they had – a history.”

“If I came across the name, it was only in passing. So you might know more than I do. If you put the pieces together, you could write an article series, or maybe a book. This seems to have really grabbed you, huh?”

“I suppose you could say that.” Karen trusts Ellison, but she’s also not sure that a sane, sensible, skeptical man-of the-world is going to buy the full extent of a story about magic, witches, demons, gods and monsters, and the truth of what really lives in this city – what, with Billy, might have returned as a clear and present danger. “I just think it’s important. And – unrelated question, sorry – I was just thinking that you have to have some contacts in law enforcement, don’t you? I know about the policy of protecting sources and ensuring witness confidentiality and anonymity, I can promise I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important. But is there anyone I could possibly talk to? I wouldn’t bring your name into it.”

“Are we referring to the same project?” Ellison frowns. “If Russo was born in 1913, he’s dead now. What does current law enforcement have to do with it? Unsolved cold case?”

“Something like that.” Karen taps her fingers. “I don’t know how all the pieces fit together just yet, but I. . . it’s something I’d like to look into. Do you have anyone?”

Ellison continues to eye her askance, but he is a good enough newspaperman to respect that she can’t say everything, and finally gives her a name and point of contact – the New York branch office of the Department of Homeland Security, where he’s occasionally spoken to a Special Agent Dinah Madani about various matters of legal record and ongoing investigations. Never been quoted by name, of course. Karen promises that she will be conscientious and not give him any reason to regret it. She thanks Ellison, picks up her purse and the file on Billy, and heads out.

Karen isn’t sure that you can just drop in unannounced at DHS headquarters, but she also thinks that someone in high places should be aware of Russo’s presence in the city, even if she’ll have to put it in political and not possible-return-of-a-terrifying-immortal-being terms. So she goes to the office, tells the receptionist that she has an important tip and she’d like to speak to Agent Madani, and after about fifty bureaucratic runarounds, a step through a metal detector and a pat-down search, and whatever else, she is informed that she can have ten minutes of the agent’s precious time between meetings. She has to leave her bag here, and it is also to be understood that the government of the United States of America is doing her a particular favor when they don’t have to. So much for “see something, say something.” Maybe she should have just called the NYPD, though they’d probably also dismiss it as a hoax or a prank. Ellison trusts this woman, though, so Karen is going to have to hope there’s some kind of reciprocal relationship.

Having dutifully left her coat and purse behind, Karen is shown into a glass-walled, grey-toned office, where Agent Madani is absorbed in a stack of paperwork that she quickly stuffs into a drawer. She rises to her feet, eyeing her unexpected visitor closely. Madani is younger than Karen expected, only a few years older than her, with thick dark curls, a trim blue blazer and slacks, and a polite, unreadable expression. She offers a hand for an impeccably correct shake. “Reception said that you were Karen Page? From the _New York Bulletin?”_

“I – I don’t actually work there, but I did come from there, yes.” Karen takes the indicated chair across from Madani’s desk, as the agent resumes her own. “I have some material that I think DHS might want – want to know about. It’s difficult to explain, but I believe that there might be a credible threat to the city. If you could let me finish before you ask any questions?”

One of Madani’s dark eyebrows rises, since DHS must be no stranger to fake reports and cock-and-bull stories, but she makes a small gesture, indicating Karen to proceed. Karen cuts out as much of the obviously insane stuff as possible, but if she’s going to be honest about the nature of the threat, she finally has to bite the bullet and explain the truth. There is a very long silence when she finishes, as Madani taps a pen atop a stack of file folders. Then she says, biting off the words, “Ellison doesn’t usually send me crackpots.”

Karen winces. “I – I said it was going to be hard to explain, but – ”

“You’re asking me to set up an investigation into this fairytale about a possibly immortal CEO running a secret hit squad of witches through government channels.” Madani blows out an incredulous breath. “Which you know about because you yourself are _also_ a witch, and because you think Russo might be similar to whatever not-quite-human thing your husband is. Miss – Mrs.? – Page, this is a very interesting story, but it’s just that. A _story._ A wild flight of fancy that has no basis in fact. DHS has real threats from real places to investigate, and honestly, I’m disappointed that you would waste – ”

“Russo’s working with someone,” Karen interrupts. “He gave his code name as Agent Orange, but the woman at the meeting called him William. I don’t know if that’s another alias or not, but he implied that he had some kind of high-ranking intelligence job. I get the sense that Russo’s bankrolling him, and Orange is handling the in-the-trenches dirty work. I could be mistaken, but whoever I met, it was a real man. If they’re running a completely off-the-books operation of whatever – whatever _nature_ , that doesn’t mean the threat is baseless.”

Despite herself, Madani has no immediate response for that. She opens her mouth and then shuts it, shaking her head. After a long pause, she says, “Can you describe this ‘Agent Orange?’ ”

Karen gives her as much as she can, which does not feel very helpful in terms in picking this particular evil white man out of the hordes of his evil white brethren. Madani seems somewhat more inclined to believe her on this accord, rather than the witch stuff, for which she cannot strictly be blamed. As they’re finishing up, Madani says abruptly, “If you do know about this, and if these people actually have some kind of unusual capabilities, you’re probably aware that there could be a cost to divulging this information. If something does come of this, you might want to consider witness protection.”

Karen almost tells her that she’ll have very good witness protection in another five and a half months, but Madani has clearly already had to swallow more apparent total bullshit today than she does in a year, and is about at her limit. They exchange another polite handshake, Karen takes Madani’s card with her direct phone number, and Madani walks her out to retrieve her coat and bag. As Karen is shrugging it on, Madani says, “I’d like to speak with your husband.”

“That, ah. . .” Karen struggles to think of a good excuse that won’t sound immediately suspicious. “Like I said, he. . . doesn’t live here. In New York City proper, that is. I won’t be able to contact him for another several months.”

“That sounds lonely.” Madani doesn’t necessarily believe it, that much is plain, but she can offer that courtesy at least. “If your or his circumstances do change, let me know. Good afternoon, Mrs. Page.”

With that, as Karen is wondering if she should correct the title or not, she is firmly shown the door, booted onto the busy streets, and decides that she should run a quick errand. Apparently none of her clothes fit anymore, which is a little annoying, and the Queen of the Underworld might be able to afford to shop at Saks, but running up thousands of dollars on designer duds might be an irresponsible use of magically unlimited money, and it’s not her style anyway. So she goes to Target, picks out a few new skirts and slacks, then takes the subway home. Once more, she finds herself glancing to either side, since she _did_ just whistle-blow two very dangerous men, and the memories of Union Allied will not go away in a hurry. Maybe she _should_ call Matt and Foggy. They might be able to help, and even if their relationship is strained at present, they’re still her best friends. She doesn’t have to do this totally alone.

Karen gets off the 1, trots out of the station, and turns down her street, digging in her bag for her phone; she’ll call them as soon as she is safely inside. She buzzes into her building and takes the stairs up to her apartment, finds herself embarrassingly out of breath at the top, and turns down to her front door. Takes out her keys, unlocks it, and steps cautiously inside, on considerable alert. Maybe she’s being too cautious, but maybe she isn’t.

Nobody appears to be there, and it doesn’t look as if the knob has been forced. Karen shuts the door and puts the deadbolt in, then kicks off her shoes and hangs up her jacket. She’s just taking out her phone and trying to decide which of the boys to call first, when the shadows on her couch move, rise up, and flow into fluid shape. An instant later, there’s a woman standing there where one wasn’t before, and one, most unfortunately, that Karen recognizes.

“Hello, darling,” Elektra Natchios says, and smiles sweetly. “I really think we should talk.”

 

**V.**

The depths of Tartarus are – perhaps fuckin’ unsurprisingly – black as pitch. Frank wasn’t sure if he was expecting more fire, screaming sinners and roasted racks of disembodied limbs, or all the other stuff that the usual suspects tell you about hell, but it’s not like that. It’s utterly formless, a void so deep that it’s close to a black hole, a fold or puncture in space-time that leads down beyond conscious existence, a crushing weight of oblivion. No human could possibly withstand this place, and even Frank, a powerful demigod who has spent his afterlife in the underworld, is having trouble getting his bearings or catching his breath. He’s never really been aware of the need to breathe for the last seventy years, which makes the struggle more noticeable, and he staggers, putting his hand out reflexively to catch himself, but there’s nothing there. The fire of Phlegethon has faded, and he has no certainty of getting back out of here. This was a really goddamn stupid idea. This place held Billy, with similar powers to his, captive for three-quarters of a century. Frank should leave now, while he still can.

He stands there for a long moment (seconds? Centuries? Days? All time everywhere?) contemplating the abyss. He can’t see jackshit, obviously, and when he tries to conjure up a fireball to light the way, it sputters feebly, catches a brief spark, and goes out. He could stand here like a numbnut and yell for Billy, like he really thinks that’s going to tell him anything about whether he’s still here, and maybe he had best hope it wasn’t answered. Frank can’t be sure, can’t be sure of anything, but it definitely seems as if the prison is deserted, its occupant fled. Could be that by coming down here at all, he fell right into the trap Billy wanted, and –

He’s just turning to go, about to conjure the boat and haul ass, when he hears the voice. It calls out, thin and wavering, frightened. “Frank? _Frank?_ Sweetie, is that. . . is that you?”

Frank goes cold (well, _colder_ ) from head to heel. He hasn’t heard that voice aloud since May 21, 1946, but of course he knows it, has never dislodged it from the private, poignant place in his heart where he keeps them forever. He knows it’s a trick, it’s _gotta_ be a trick (Christ, did Billy drag them down here? Was that his last act, his final burst of spite, as he fell? Did he grab her and the kids and pull them into the black, into the – _Jesus,_ no, it’s not real) – and yet. His voice bursts out, rough and raw and shaken, before he can stop it. “M-Maria?”

“Frank?” It sounds as if it’s moving – as if _she’s_ moving closer, blundering her way across the stygian plains toward him. She gasps, sobs in relief. “Frank! Oh god, baby, oh _god,_ please – wait. I’ve been – I’ve been so afraid, I’ve – I always thought you’d come.”

“Yeah?” Frank manages, still stunned. He can hear other footsteps, smaller and lighter, and tries to choke down the lump in his throat. It’s a trick, it _has_ to be – but even the tiniest chance that his family has somehow been trapped down here is enough to root him in place. His head is screaming, and he’s trying to chase it away enough to focus. “That – is that really you?”

“Yes.” Maria, or whatever is speaking with Maria’s voice, is half-crying. “It’s me. It’s me.”

Frank jerks, as another voice chimes in, near enough to make him flinch and then reach out desperately, as if she might be close enough to grab. “Daddy?”

“Lisa?” He rotates on the spot, balling his fists against his legs. His hands shake with the need to reach out, to pull his child free of a dangerous current like how he fished her out of that riptide at Atlantic City one summer, to feel her arms around his waist, hugging him tight. “Lisa?”

“Me too, Daddy,” a little boy’s voice yells. “Me too!”

“Jesus.” Frank isn’t sure he can keep it together, trick or no trick. His eyes sting. “Frankie, you – you been looking after your mother and your sister, huh? Like I said?”

“Yeah, Daddy.” Christ, he sounds like he’s right there, _right there,_ and Frank is quickly losing his composure altogether. “Wait. Don’t leave without us. Don’t leave without us, Daddy!”

“Tryin’ not to,” Frank mumbles, still in shock, even as he can hear the footsteps that belong to Maria almost reaching the ledge on which he’s standing. He can see something, taking form out of the shadows. It’s his wife. Jesus fuckin’ Christ, it’s his wife, and she’s smiling at him, pale and dirty and bedraggled, but desperate and glowing and teary, holding out her hands. He hesitates, then starts to go to his knees – but no. He can’t. Should turn his back and abandon them here. That’s what he has to do.

“Frank.” Maria reaches up, and her hand is so close to his. “Frank, help me out.”

He remains transfixed, even as he can see two smaller shapes trotting out of the murk, and it stabs him straight through the chest, because it’s them, it’s his kids, it’s his goddamn kids, and the tears are definitely overflowing and running down his cheeks now. Lisa smiles at him, and Frankie waves eagerly. “Daddy!” they yell. “Daddy, save us!”

“I got you,” Frank mutters, mostly by reflex. He’s on his knees now, and they cluster closer, smiling up at him. He thinks wildly of sirens, sirens in the passage, taking on whatever form would most tempt the man trying to get home. Odysseus tied to the mast so he could listen to their songs, while the oarsmen pulled relentlessly, ears stuffed with wax. Odysseus, in Frank’s opinion, always seemed like kind of a dick. Had a family at home, a loyal wife who never gave up hope, and spent years shacking up with various goddesses and witches instead. But Jesus, is that him? Is he living in sin with Karen, some deceitful Circe, when he should be speeding home to Penelope? When Maria is here, is here, is –

Frank’s resolve is wavering, and he reaches out for her with both hands. Their fingers almost brush, they grip hold, and for a moment more, she is smiling. And then, just as fast, she is not.

An echoing, shattering scream rips across the cavern, and Frank doesn’t pull loose in time before scything claws slash into the underside of his wrist. His blood is slow and cold and so dark-red as to almost be black, and it burns like the red of the pomegranate seeds, as Maria and the kids grab hold of both arms and bite. They still look more or less like themselves, but now their eyes are black and their mouths are full of shark-like teeth – they’re not, they’re not, or otherwise they have been so corrupted by years, decades in the dark that this _was_ them once, and now they are demons. That possibility, that terrible possibility that it’s not just an illusion, it’s not a total lie, makes it difficult for Frank to fight them in the way in which he’s certainly capable. He can’t – he _cannot –_ draw back a fist and broadside his own goddamn wife in the face, he _can’t –_

And yet, they’re savaging at him, they’re dragging him toward the edge of the cliff – _every person is tempted to jump –_ and he’s taking an amount of damage that even immortality is not going to immediately repair. He struggles and twists, trying to rip them free without outright destroying them, but their hands are pale and cold and tipped with obsidian-black claws that tear and tear, and their faces blur and smear and smudge, melted-wax effigies of his wife and his little girl and his boy, flesh drawing away over bone, burning, _burning_. “Daddy,” they whisper, and “Frank, sweetheart,” skipping and repeating like a jumping needle on a phonograph, weirder and wickeder, until it’s barely recognizable as a human voice at all. Then the Maria-ghast lets go of his arms, and lunges at his throat, and it is only then that Frank Castle moves.

He kicks her away, clumsily, as she shrieks and rolls off and goes for him again. Frank’s arms and shoulders and chest and legs are bleeding from their bite wounds, he covers his head and strikes out wildly and runs, as they swoop and shriek and sprout black bat-wings and dive at him. He lowers his head and runs faster, following some vague sense of light ahead, even if that’s probably just another wrong memory. Sees a glimmer, then a flame, and finally, the river Phlegethon bursts into existence again, and the boat is there, rocking. If he can just reach it.

Frank puts on a final burst of speed, feels a stabbing pain in the back of his right leg, and hurls himself for it, wondering if he’s going to hit the lava instead, but he doesn’t. He crashes into the bottom of the boat and rolls, flattened and breathless, as the demons shriek at him from the rocks and the boat starts to move, fighting its way upriver against the current. Nobody ever leaves Tartarus, after all. Nobody ever comes back. Except Billy, and he didn’t go this way.

Frank lies flat, having had enough experience of taking a pummeling to know that he’s badly hurt. A thousand wounds weep crimson tears, his clothes are torn and sooty, his flesh chewed and mauled, and he feels as if there’s a boulder on his chest for more than one reason. He shuts his eyes against the threatening onrush of tears, smoke and salt, trying to banish their distorted faces from where they’re seared onto the inside of his eyelids. He has to try to conserve his strength and patch himself up when he gets back to the underworld. If he gets back.

Frank loses track of time altogether, as they drift and drift like a ship lost at sea, as the river sometimes dims to flickering embers but never goes out altogether. Then he feels the keel scrape on rock, and the air turns cooler from its hellish heat, and he wonders if he’s marooned somewhere in between the living and the dead, Elysium or Tartarus, _from the wings of heaven to the reaches of hell_. He’s not sure, and it takes too much effort to open his eyes. He shuts them. He doesn’t know where the fuck he’s ended up now, on the many planes of existence he’s traveled through. He almost doesn’t care.

When Frank opens his eyes, Curtis Hoyle is standing over him.

The shock punches his breath out of his abused chest, he can only stare – he saw Curt through that door himself, he knows he went on to his reward, to his rest – and he wonders if after so long, he has in fact properly died. Their eyes continue to lock, as Curtis wears an expression of tolerant exasperation – after all, he spent a lot of goddamn time patching Frank up from this and similar states of bloody mess. Finally he says, “Castle, you son of a bitch.”

“Curt?” All Frank can think is that this is another trick, like what just happened with Maria and the kids, and he sits bolt upright and scrambles to the corner of the boat. “What the fuck you doing here? You come after me too, I’m gonna have to – ”

“What the fuck are _you_ doing here?” Curtis shakes his head. “This isn’t the underworld. And why do you look like shit?”

Frank stares at him, wary as a treed cat, trying to take it in. Curt is – he looks _young,_ and strong, and whole. He isn’t missing a leg any more, he has some sort of inner glow, and as much as Frank tries to make out the shape of a howling demon lurking beneath, he can’t. Curtis seems fully inclined to push the boat back into the current and let Frank’s stubborn ass bleed to death if he wants to, which is the first thing that makes Frank think this might actually be him. Curtis never let him wallow, loved him but never put up with his bullshit, kept his secret for decades, and now, if the boat has made its way to one of the other realms of the afterlife – Elysium, say – maybe this really is him. Frank wants to believe, wants it badly, but he was just burned to within an inch of his life, literally, and he doesn’t know if he can. The silence lingers.

Finally, Curtis shrugs. “You can sit there,” he says, “or you can get out and come over here and I can see what I can do for whatever the hell you just ran into. Probably don’t want to know, but that’s how it goes with you, huh? Asshole.”

Frank weighs it up, decides that on balance he’s going to take the chance, and stumbles out of the boat. He loses his balance, Curtis catches him, and escorts him up the beach to the shady trees beyond. There’s a medical kit there, as if it just sprang into existence the moment Frank turned up and figured it would be needed, and Curtis sets to work with his same brisk efficiency. It’s quiet for a few moments, and then he says, “So you going to tell me, or what?”

“I. . .” Frank blows out a slow, ragged breath. He does need to talk to someone before he goes totally fuckin’ nuts, and maybe that will help make sense of it. So he tells Curt everything that’s gone on since they said their last (well, apparently not quite) goodbye. Karen, and marrying her, and how goddamn hard it’s gotten to live apart for six months in turns. His fear that Billy’s loose, that he went down to Tartarus like a fuckin’ idiot and nearly died for it, knew it wasn’t really Maria and the kids, but what if it was. “He can do it again,” he finishes up, feeling drained. “Bill, he can – he can do it again, if he goes after Karen. If he takes her away from me – I can’t. I can’t survive that, Curtis, I can’t, okay? If he – if I lose her – ”

Frank stammers, can’t finish his sentence, grimaces as Curtis sews up one of the deep lacerations on his arms – it doesn’t hurt the exact same way as it would as a human, but it more than Jesus Christ goddamn hurts – and struggles to swallow around the lump of ice in his throat. He can’t say any more, but he doesn’t have to, and Curtis glances at him sidelong, then back at the stitches. Finally he says, “Karen. You really love her, huh?”

“Yeah.” Frank’s throat scrapes like broken glass, but he is not remotely about to deny it. “Yeah, I do.”

Curtis considers, tears open a sterile wipe and cleans the Lord of the Dead’s mashed-up bicep with it, and cuts a strip of gauze. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know, huh? I don’t fuckin’ know.” Frank hits his thigh in frustration, regrets it at once, and grimaces, eyes watering. “I can’t go back to the overworld if I might see her, she can’t stay down here, there’s some mysterious magical balance we might piss off and end up with her dead if we’re not goddamn careful, and I know Bill’s after her, but I can’t – what? What do I do?”

“You can’t go back to Earth from the underworld, yeah,” Curtis says. “But you’re not there right now, are you?”

“Wait – ” Frank stares at him. “You mean – what, if I left from here, I’d get around the rules somehow? That what you sayin’, Curt? You some kind of goddamn cosmic lawyer now?”

“Hell if I know.” Curtis bites off the thread and tapes the dressing into place. “But you and I, we got out of a lot worse places than this. We could probably figure something out.”

Frank doesn’t answer at once. The possibility of being able to return to the world of the living, to fight Billy himself one more time, even if he still can’t see Karen, is dangerously tempting, and he has to restrain himself from immediately suggesting they try it. Because this hits at the heart of what just happened, what he fears the most, and can’t bring himself to entirely put into words. At last, however, he says, “But is that what I’m supposed to do? What if it was my family down there? What if it was? What if Bill grabbed ‘em somehow on his fall, and. . . it wasn’t them anymore, not really, but what if it was, to start with? If they’ve been trapped down there, and suffering. . .  I should save them, Curt. I have to. I fuckin’ have to. I – ”

There is a long pause. Curtis is visibly weighing his words. Then he says, “Frank, it wasn’t your family down there.”

“Eh?” Frank wants to believe, but he can’t, not like this, not immediately. “How can you be sure?”

“You forget where we are?” Curtis waves a hand at their surroundings, which Frank hasn’t really noticed, but now he can see more clearly. Ice-blue waves lapping at crystalline white sand, bright sun, deep green shade, a sense of rest and ease and warmth, _peace._ “I’m technically not supposed to tell you this, but you know, screw that. You goddamn deserve to know. Your family’s here, Frank. I’ve seen them, I’ve been with them. Took Maria and Lisa out to talk about all the things Lisa’s learned, that she’s studying. She’s grown up now, Frank. She never got the chance to do that on earth, so she wanted to do it here. Total genius, but we knew that. Takes after her mom, mostly, but she’s got your temper. And your boy, Frankie, Frank Junior, he’s the opposite. Looks a lot like you, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Likes to read. Writes poems. I’ve been teaching him what I know, about how to put people back together. He likes that. Your kid’s a healer, Frank. He doesn’t have to break things. Not like you. I know you never really wanted that for him.”

Frank realizes after a long moment that his mouth is open, so he shuts it. He turns away, struggling totally uselessly to keep his composure. He has a hundred questions, a thousand, about what Lisa’s learning, if Maria’s still beautiful, if Frankie still loves the Dodgers and knows they’re in Los Angeles now, but he doesn’t ask them aloud. He shudders from head to toe, draws an aching breath, until he’s finally sure that his voice won’t crack when he speaks. “You know,” he says. “I just – it’s occurring to me that I’m never – I’m never gonna see that, am I? I’m not going to die, as far as I know, and a fuck-up like me, I’m for goddamn sure not getting into heaven even if I did. I just. . . I’m never gonna see it.”

Curtis starts to answer, then stops. There’s not much you can say to that, not when neither of them can say for sure that Frank’s wrong. There’s a long silence as they gaze out over the waves. At last he remarks, “You’re here now, aren’t you?”

“That’s different,” Frank says. “You know I can’t go in, and I can’t stay. But even if I did, I. . . what am I supposed to say to my old lady, Curt, huh? You think I want to go in and tell her that I married another woman, that I gave up my chance at coming after her for someone else? Maria, you know, she could be vicious, right? You think any woman wants to hear that? I just. . . I dunno. Maybe it’s better if they don’t have to see me again – hey! The fuck was that for?”

Curtis shrugs, displaying no apparent remorse for slapping his pitifully wounded best friend upside the head. “You were talking shit again, Frank.”

Frank glares at him, rubbing his cheek, though he supposes he can’t substantially argue with Curt’s conclusions. “Okay,” he allows. “But I just. . . I still don’t know.”

“Maria knows,” Curtis says, after another pause. “So if you thought she somehow didn’t, well, she does. And she knows that the two of you have gone on, gone past, gone beyond. Even here, in paradise, it’s. . . it’s complicated. She realized a while ago that she was never going to see you again, most likely. Everyone else gets to trust that they’ll see their loved ones again in death, but she doesn’t get that. So she watches you in other ways. It’s what it is.”

“Makes sense,” Frank says croakily. “She always was smarter than me.”

Curtis smiles faintly, as if to say they’ve always both known that, but it isn’t designed to cut. For a few moments, there’s only the sound of the distant waves. Then he says, “Listen, Frank. Since you’re too much of a screw-up to get into heaven, you have my word that I will be there for your family. But you need to understand that this isn’t some case of your wife and your poor little kids being stranded somewhere where they need someone and you’re letting them down by not being there. They’re part of something much bigger now. They’re at peace. Of course they still love you, but it’s… it’s different. You haven’t failed them, and they’re safe. Hear me?”

Frank doesn’t answer, mostly because he can’t. Finally, he harrumphs, knuckles the back of his hand roughly across his eyes, and nods. “Okay,” he says again. “If it – if it can’t be me, Curt, I’m – there’s no one else I’d rather have it be than you. You got that?”

“Yeah,” Curtis says. “And you’re damn lucky it’s me, Castle.”

They look at each other a moment longer, then grab hands, pull the other in, and hug as hard as they can, for as long as they can. Curtis grabs Frank’s head in his hands and kisses his forehead, then lets him go and gestures him to get up. Still a little shaky, Frank does, and they walk down the beach a way, the waves curling and crashing at their feet, leading out to an endless bright-white horizon. They reach the end of the sand, where there’s another boat waiting, and Curtis gestures to it. “That’s your ride.”

Frank looks at it. It’s a rowboat, small and white and weathered, and a couple oars slung in the bottom. Looks like the boats he grew up with, in fact, sculling across Long Island Sound and trying either to impress his friends with dumb shit or a girl with a pretty sunset. “Where’s this gonna take me?”

“Hell if I know,” Curtis says. “Not here, though. And, I think, not the underworld either. Now come on. If Billy is still out there, you better get your ass moving.”

Frank snorts, reaches out, and they clasp hands one more time, holding on. Then Curtis gives him a little push, and Frank stumbles backward into the boat, sitting down and sliding the oars into the locks. Curtis shoves the boat out into the glittering water, and stands there on shore, watching him, as Frank starts to row. He in turn watches, keeps watching, as he gets farther and farther from land, and there’s nothing but brightness, and the small silhouette of his real best friend is finally gone, the heavenly light fades out, and he is adrift between the stars.

 

**VI.**

“Elektra,” Karen says, like that’s going to properly address the situation, or remind the other woman that they are both witches, or forestall whatever might be about to happen here. “I – don’t know that I was expecting to see you tonight.”

“Most likely you were not, no.” Elektra doesn’t seem very concerned with social niceties or little things like apologizing for breaking into someone’s apartment. She looks sleek, self-satisfied, dark and lovely and dangerous, and trails a hand across the back of Karen’s sofa. “As I said. We should talk.”

“Should we?” Karen thinks this is a bit of an unlikely precursor to Elektra just up and murdering her for telling Madani about Orange and Russo, but she can’t be sure. “About what?”

“Well.” Elektra stops her prowling, sits back down on the couch, and rests both elbows on her knees, eyes dark and unblinking. “For a start, I know who you really are. _Persephone.”_

“I – what?” Well, Karen supposes, yes, that’s accurate, even if it gives her a sudden stab of panic that Elektra is here to exploit that somehow. In case Elektra somehow doesn’t know what she’s done, she’s not going to ask if that’s why she’s here, but still. “Have you told Orange about this?”

“Him?” Elektra scoffs. “That pathetic little man? He thinks he controls me, and I allow him to do so, since it provides me with a lifestyle that I presently enjoy, and half the time, I suggest the targets to him that he thinks he has come up with by himself. But no, Persephone. You and I know that we are much stronger, we have much more we could do together, than one stupid little mortal and his warmongering. Would you like to kill him? That could be quite fun.”

Karen is still feeling distinctly wrong-footed by this entire conversation, even if she’s obliquely relieved that Elektra also thinks Orange is full of shit. There are any number of questions she could start off with, if there’s any chance Elektra will answer them honestly or at all, and she does not quite dare to take her eyes off her. “How do you know Matt?”

“It’s _Matthew_ you want to know about first?” Elektra arches an eyebrow. “That surprises me.”

“I want to know why my friend, my best friend, knows another witch, and didn’t tell me.”

“Because Matthew is so good at telling people things?” Elektra glances away, face half in shadows, as Karen feels an unexpected understanding with her. “Well. Suffice to say, we knew each other in college. We were lovers, for a time. I thought he understood me, that we would be much more, at which it transpired I was wrong. So if you feared that all this time, he consorted with me beneath the light of a demon moon, and never breathed a word to you, he did not.”

This makes Karen feel somewhat better, that at least Matt wasn’t actively keeping this (as well) from her, since the Daredevil thing was enough. She can tell that Elektra is still interested in this subject, that there is unresolved business, no matter how lightly she is trying to play it, but Karen does not feel any particular obligation to get into the weeds of Matt’s love life right now. If Elektra is in a divulgatory mood, she has to take advantage of it. “Who’s Orange?”

“His name is William,” Elektra says, with a small shrug. “William Rawlins. He works for the CIA. Very well placed. His superiors don’t know about Kronos, but I doubt they’d care if they did. Still, Persephone. I have to warn you about any attempt to take it down. I have put a great deal into it, it is _my_ operation more than it is truly his. I take pride in my work. So yes.”

“Stop calling me that,” Karen says. “My name is Karen.”

“As you wish.” Elektra’s expression says she’ll call her whatever she wants. “But you know it is the truth. And where is your Hades? _Who_ is he, for that matter? But I suspect somehow that I can guess. Billy Russo, god of war. Who would the god of death be, if not his old and bitter enemy? Frank Castle. But that is _just_ a guess.”

Karen flinches, despite herself, which is clearly more than Elektra needed for confirmation. There is a tenuous pause. Then Karen says, “Whatever you want with Frank, you’re not – ”

“Again. _Frank._ ” Elektra makes a slightly scathing noise, as if Karen keeps sidetracking the conversation with idiot men – Matt, Rawlins, Frank – when she is more interested in the two of them, and the power that the pair of them could wield together. Despite the venomous, vulpine way in which Elektra is offering it, Karen gets the sense that she is truly lonely, and that she has seized on some idea of Karen as a real partner, two witches, two powerful women, who could join together and stamp their will on the world, if only they were brazen enough to try. It leaves Karen with the unsettling sense that if she is Persephone, then Elektra is Medusa. Look at her too long and be turned to stone, as the snakes hiss and sigh in her hair, but she is only a villainess because men called her one, because they broke her and banished her. Of course the righteous hero though it was well done to fly in on a magical horse and cut off her head, and boast about it to the world. What else would anyone think, but that?

“I do not want anything with Frank,” Elektra says, after another pause. “I have sent plenty of people to him, it is his affair to sort them out. But you, Persephone. As I said, if you do not like Orange, we can get rid of him. We could run Kronos together, if you like. There are many things I could teach you. What do you say?”

Karen has no idea how to answer that. It’s clear that Orange – Rawlins – would not necessarily be much of a loss to the world, but it’s less clear if giving Elektra full rein to do whatever she wants with Kronos would be any better. “So Billy Russo – ”

“He is a… dangerous enemy. I will not deny that.” For once, Elektra seems to be taking the subject seriously. “Especially if he knew who you were. I suspect he has an inkling, but if he did know for certain, he would already have come after you. I could keep you safe, Persephone. Your husband is not here. Your husband will never be here. You need me.”

Karen looks at her, the Amazon offering herself as the bodyguard for the queen, and despite herself, can feel something secret and strange and wanting, as their eyes lock across the dark living room and the edges of Elektra’s silhouette ripple like smoke. It _is_ true that perhaps she should not reject an offer of defense too hastily, no matter how many strings it comes attached with, if Ares is on her trail, or might be soon. It’s clear that Elektra is suggesting it because she wants Karen’s power and Karen’s help with her own ends, but still. Madani suggested witness protection earlier, and five months is a long time for someone to do something bad.

“Maybe,” Karen says, after a long pause. “I – I don’t know. All right.”

Elektra smiles. The next instant, she has moved without reference to ordinary spatial limitations, and is standing in front of Karen, where she was across the room before. She lifts her elegant, ringed hand and cups Karen’s face, her fingers smooth and slim and cool, and for a moment, Karen wonders if her lips also taste of pomegranate. She says again, “As you wish.”

With that, as swiftly as a candle blown out, Elektra is gone, as Karen turns uselessly on the spot in search of her. She shakes her head, feels half-drunk, and struggles to remember what she was going to do before walking in here. Right, call Matt and Foggy. Should she still do that? She stares down at the phone, clutched in her fingers. Ask Matt if his possibly psychotic ex-girlfriend is a good choice as personal bodyguard? Explain _that_ whole can of worms? She will if it’s necessary, but… maybe later.

Still reeling, Karen stumbles into her room, undresses, and crawls into bed. She falls asleep quickly, but has vivid and demented dreams, from which she keeps waking with a gasp. At last, around seven o’clock, she gives up hope of getting any more sleep, and gets up again. She should go back to DHS and try to talk to Madani again. She has a name now, a real name, someone who could actually be traced. William Rawlins working for the CIA, running a secret black-ops ring, is a little more to their concern than Agent Orange with a coven of _Charmed_ fans. And if it’s a matter of time until Billy realizes her true identity, there is none to waste.

Karen drags herself out of bed, gets into the shower, and stands under the water until it runs lukewarm. As she gets out, she surveys herself in the mirror and notices that she's looking a little bloated, which she puts down to PMS. She certainly does not miss not having periods in the underworld, that’s for sure, but they inevitably return in the real world, which is a drag. It does mean, however, that when she pulls on even one of the skirts she bought just the other day, it’s already a little tight around the midriff. Annoying.

Karen brushes her hair and does her makeup, then steps out to join the usual morning throng of commuters. She almost heads to Nelson & Murdock by habit, and then has to switch gears and make for DHS instead. She’s just trotting down the sidewalk, about to reach the building, when a sleek black car pulls up, the door opens, and Billy Russo and Dinah Madani get out.

Karen screeches to a halt, ducking back behind the corner of the building she just passed, then peers warily out. She can’t be sure, but there’s something about the way they’re acting, Billy’s hand casually on Dinah’s back, that makes her think they spent the night together. Not that she could otherwise blame them – they’re both attractive and presumably consenting adults, they’re free to do whatever they want – but this seems, to say the least, far too convenient. She didn’t have a picture of Billy, after all, so if Russo introduced himself with an alias, is Madani even aware that this is the guy Karen told her to look out for, just yesterday? Billy, for his part, must have known or guessed that Madani was looking into him, which means he was surely tipped off by Karen’s digging that someone was getting suspicious. Madani is a professional, no way would she start blabbing about sensitive and confidential case details to a one-night stand, no matter how pretty. But Billy Russo is also the god of war, apparently, and has powers far beyond anything Madani knows about or believes in. He could very easily have compelled her.

As the two of them vanish into the building – Madani’s bringing him to work? Did he suggest that she should do that too? Is she about to tell him everything Karen told her yesterday? – Karen stands there in a low-level panic and wonders what the hell to do now. Should she try to send some kind of magical SOS into the ether for Elektra, or cut bait and run on the whole operation, or warn Ellison that he could also be in danger if Russo starts looking for the source of the information, or – what? Her thoughts whirl and eddy wildly in her head, not coalescing into sense, as more DHS agents start trudging up the sidewalk on their way to work. One of them has a bag of some strong-smelling breakfast, and for no apparent reason, the smell makes Karen gag. She turns away, swallowing hard in an attempt to keep her own down. What the hell? The bug was a couple weeks ago. She didn’t think it was –

Oh God.

Wait. Oh Christ. _Wait._ This, and the feeling intermittently crappy, and the clothes not fitting, and looking at herself this morning and thinking she had a bit of a –

 _Jesus._ Is she – is she _pregnant?_

In one sense, Karen at least no longer has to worry about Billy and Madani right now, because her head has been completely taken over with a problem of far greater magnitude. She has never even remotely, consciously considered the possibility, because she just assumed it wasn’t one – which, she thinks now, was probably very stupid of her. You only need to look at literally any Greek myth to know that gods and humans can have children together, that the heroes of most of the epic tales – Hercules, Perseus, whoever – are demigods with a divine father and a human mother, and that almost all the problems in this cosmology seem to have been caused by Zeus being completely goddamn unable to keep it in his celestial pants (toga?) There aren’t exactly Durex ultra-thins or birth-control prescriptions in the underworld, so that doesn’t come up, and while it’s obviously never happened before, that did not mean that it was completely unlikely. But that does not solve the outstanding question, or all the other reasons this is very, very not good. This is – no. Logistics or otherwise, it makes no _sense._

Karen turns and starts to walk, fueled both by some instinctive need to get away from Billy and to try to work it out if she moves. First off, she clearly cannot go for a prenatal checkup and inform the nurse that if timelines hold out, if she’s maybe a couple months along now, she will have to give birth in the underworld with, she doesn’t know, the goddamn Fates for midwives (she’s met them, they’re creepy). Besides, you don’t have a baby, a living thing, the _start_ of a life, in the land of the dead. You can’t raise a kid down there, bereft of any kind of normal childhood, so – what? Ask Matt and Foggy if they’re interested in foster-parenting? Even if Karen did take care of it when she was on the surface, she’d be gone half the year. It would barely know her, and it would never know Frank. She can’t even tell her husband about this, like every other couple would get to do, to discuss it and to be excited and/or terrified. What is she supposed to do, just turn up eight months pregnant and scare the shit out of him?

Maybe there’s someone she can ask about this, Karen thinks. Maybe they can tell her what to do. But the only option coming to mind is Elektra, and she’s not really sure this is something on which the other witch is qualified to advise. She hasn’t even decided what she feels about it. It’s not that she’s entirely opposed to the idea of having a kid. She has a lot of love to give and a desire to help and care and protect. She just has thought that she’d like to start when they’re about five years old, when they’re a little person, and get to skip over the mess and noise and sleep deprivation and difficult parts of babyhood. They’re cute and all, but Karen has never felt outstandingly attached to the idea of having one herself. They don’t stay that way forever, of course, and we all had to start in the same place, learn the same things, but – but _what?_

She stands at a pedestrian crossing, arms tightly folded over her slightly swollen stomach, wondering if she should go to CVS and get a test, do the sensible thing, confirm it one way or the other before she goes completely insane. Frank, though. Oh God, Frank. He’s the Lord of the Dead, obviously, but he was also a father once, long ago, and he has still never entirely recovered from the shock and the horror of that loss. On her last return to the surface, Karen went out to Calvary Cemetery by the Long Island Expressway, where Frank’s family is buried, and found their graves and cleared them off, brought Maria a bouquet of flowers and some toys for the kids, sat there and talked to them and introduced herself and felt only a little ridiculous about it. It’s been seventy-something years since their deaths, they don’t have any living relatives, and she felt that it was the thing to do, somehow. Yet would he even want this? You can’t replace a lost child, even if you can have a new one. But as noted, if they’re not raising a kid in the precincts of the dead, which she doesn’t think Frank would want for them, he never even gets to see this one at all. To know that you have a living child again, up in the sunlit world, and yet still remain permanently parted from them, seems almost too cruel to be believed.

The walk light turns green, and Karen crosses. She doesn’t know where she’s going, except maybe back to Central Park, since that’s her place of refuge, that’s where she saw Frank before, and the presence of the trees comforts her. The blossoms, the growing things, the murmur of life, and again she hears Elektra whisper, _Persephone._ Does embracing her witch self count as that, or is there something even more, some dimension of goddesshood that remains to be claimed? Karen doesn’t know if she wants to go quite that far. As much as she struggles with reintegrating into the human world, it’s still her original self, her frame of reference, her resting place. To cast even a feeble mortal shell behind and rise into something still more? She doesn’t know.

Karen walks quickly until she reaches the park, reaches a bench free of sleeping hobos or chatting senior citizens or sunning dog-walkers, sits down, and lets loose a shaking breath. She takes out her phone, gets halfway through a text message to Foggy, doesn’t know what she’s saying, and deletes it, since this isn’t news to break over a text. But she needs to talk to someone, even if she doesn’t know what to say. God, where is Frank? Of course, that’s a rhetorical question. She knows where he is, and it isn’t here. Like Elektra said. It will never be here.

After a long moment, Karen scrubs both hands over her eyes, pushes her hair out of her face, and gets to her feet again. The urge to keep moving, to keep running, is insatiable, the same way it was when she ran away from home after Kevin, the constant low-level belief that she can somehow outdistance her problems. She can’t look back over her shoulder, in case Billy Russo or William Rawlins is sneaking up behind. She can never stop.

Karen finally comes to a halt by the carousel, watching the painted horses go round and round in endless circles. She looks at all the shrieking, laughing children, and tries to imagine having one of her own. Is this something that they would do, is this something that ordinary people do? Does she want to live as essentially a single mother, ditching her kid with friends when she runs off to her deadbeat boyfriend (not that Frank is, but you know), drifting in and out of their life, meaning the best but never able to deliver it? Like most people her age, Karen would want to be a good parent, to only do it when the time was right, to do it better than she was raised, to avoid repeating the mistakes and the scars and to take into account everything she has had to painfully learn. Her own mother died when she was young. She doesn’t have any obvious model, whether to emulate or avoid. The real Persephone had a loving mother, Demeter, who was the reason she continued to return above in the spring. Does Karen become Demeter herself, or the inverse?

God damn it. She doesn’t know, she doesn’t know. She turns away, fishes out her phone, and since she’s pretty much at her wits’ end by now, gives in and calls Foggy.

She can’t explain too much, since she keeps choking up and apologizing, though she doesn’t know for what, and Foggy seems to sense that it’s some kind of emergency and the questions can wait. He asks where she is, says he’ll meet her there in twenty minutes, and sure enough, it’s not long before he is speeding into sight with a giant funnel cake and a cone of churros, which he brandishes like a peace offering. “I come bearing gifts?”

He doesn’t get to say anything else, because Karen hugs him ferociously, almost causing him to drop his delicious, delicious burden, and he coughs, then hugs her back. Neither of them want to rehearse the argument at Josie’s or anything that came up there, and they sit down side by side on the bench. Karen discovers that she’s ravenous and practically wolfs down the funnel cake, and in between bites, the story comes spilling out of her. About being approached by Rawlins, about Kronos, about Russo, about Elektra. She’s just about to progress to the possibly-being-knocked-up part when Foggy raises a hand. “Wait. You met _Elektra?”_

“Yeah.” Karen is slightly relieved that Foggy knows her too, that she’s not just a fever dream that she and Matt both had, though she supposes that Foggy would have also met her in college. By the look on his face, the memory is not entirely pleasant. “So she was like that back then?”

“Yeah, you could say that. Super-rich diplomat’s daughter or something. Also squirrel-shit nutty.” Foggy discreetly twirls his finger next to his ear. “Matt was really into her for a while. I don’t know exactly what happened, he never explained, but it ended badly somehow. Actually, now that you mention it, I think she was Greek. Do you think there’s a real chance she’s – ?”

“I don’t know, but she called me Persephone.” Karen licks her fingers. She can no longer see a way to delay this. “Foggy, there’s – there’s something else. It’s pretty big.”

“Okay,” Foggy says. “Hit me up. I’m sitting down and everything.”

Karen stalls a few moments more, then comes clean with her suspicions. She doesn’t know if she wants Foggy to joke about it or not, but he doesn’t answer immediately, though he looks rather bowled over. Finally he ventures, “Congratulations? That’s what you’d say here, right?”

“I don’t know.” Karen’s hands contract into fists on her knees. “It’s – it’s impossible. I’d do what – ask you and Marci if you wanted to adopt the Lord of the Dead’s kid?”

“I mean, it would explain it if there were, like, bats and skeletons suddenly all over the nursery, right?” Foggy, God bless him, is still trying to hang in there. “If it’s a girl, name her Rosemary?”

Karen snorts a painful laugh, half-crying, and he puts an arm around her shoulders and hugs her hard. “Hey,” he says. “Hey, Karen, we’ll figure it out, all right? This and – and the rest of it. What you said about this Billy Russo guy is pants-shittingly terrifying, I’m not going to lie, but we’ve faced worse, right? You killed Fisk. If he’s the same – ”

“Fisk was just a demon.” Karen wipes her eyes. “A powerful and frightening demon, yes, but not the actual god of war. I can’t match against that. I don’t think Matt could either.”

Foggy snorts, without much humor. “Odds on whether that would stop him trying?”

Karen thinks he’s probably right, not that she wants Matt to get his fool self killed trying to take on a full-strength evil deity. Maybe he would see it as Daredevil’s ultimate challenge, destroying this mockery of the divine, if only it would cause him to rest more easily, if he could once more kneel before his own God and feel somehow at peace again. She doesn’t know, and it exhausts her trying to riddle it out. She wants to lie down and sleep for a hundred years, to let the earth draw over her head and shut out the world. She is so very, very tired.

“Come on,” Foggy says, giving her a hand to her feet. “Come on, Karen, I’ll take you home.”

He can’t take her where she really wants to go, which is not back to her apartment, but Karen nods and lets him lead her down the path. They get on the subway and ride back to her place, and Foggy walks her to the front door and stoutly stands guard while she unlocks the door and checks inside. She’s not sure she would know in advance if Elektra was there or not, and supposedly she would be there to protect Karen if she was. If Russo was there, Foggy would be totally defenseless, but it doesn’t seem like he is. Is that a good thing? Did Madani refuse to buckle under whatever sweetly poisonous persuasion he was applying? That won’t hold forever, though. Maybe Karen should in fact leave the country, and never come back.

“Hey,” Foggy says. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I’m fine.” Karen sits down on the couch and kicks her heels off. “You should get back to work.”

Foggy hesitates. “And if Matt asks, should I – you know. Tell him about all this?”

Karen is tired of keeping secrets from her friends, especially when she has struggled so much with Matt for doing the same, and she wants to trust that Matt’s instinct would be the same, to help, to protect, to deal with this threat however it presents itself. She doesn’t want to ask Foggy to outright lie or to keep everything back, but she still isn’t sure. At last she says, “You can tell him about Rawlins and Russo, if you think that’s a good idea. But the rest, about – me and Elektra – I don’t know. I’ll leave it up to you.”

Foggy looks as if he was hoping not to have to make this call, but nods. He pats her bracingly on the shoulder, leans down and kisses the side of her head, and tells her to get some sleep. Then, with a final glance back, he leaves, and her apartment door shuts behind him. Karen sits there, still not altogether sure that she’s really alone. Tentatively, she says, “Elektra?”

Nothing. The shadows do not stir. For better or worse, as ever, it is only her. She is alone. She is more utterly, unbearably alone than she has ever been. An echoing, endless loneliness, from which no true escape or cessation is possible. Only this, over and over, for all time. Karen wonders just then if Persephone, the real Persephone, felt this way. If she turned her face from the light and gaiety and whirl of Mount Olympus, of all the gods’ raucous parties, and gazed out into the dark. If she stood in the shadow of the Parthenon, if perhaps she would have stepped into a payphone booth if such things existed, and fed coins into the slot, even knowing that she could not call the man she wanted to speak to. Pressed her face against the glass, in the darkness of a warm night that smelled of olive and grain, and felt so very far, so unreachably far from home.

Karen lies down, and closes her eyes, and silent, shaking, until she finally drifts miserably into the darkness herself, she weeps.

 

**VII.**

Frank wakes up in a gutter. That in itself is not the surprising part, since he’s woken up in some pretty shit places (the hot, miserable, flooded, dengue-fever-ridden machine gun nests of Guadalcanal come to mind), but the fact that it appears to be a gutter in the real world. He’s still pretty messed up from the attack by the beasts of Tartarus, looks like a drunk who stumbled off the path and passed out, and in case he wasn’t sure that this is in fact New York, he hears someone yell something unflattering at him as they pass by. He groans, struggles to push himself upright and to clear the muck from his eyes, in anticipation of yet another trick or trap. It smells like the city, all right, and it sounds like it, and as he sits up, he thinks he’s washed up somewhere in Riverside Park, in Morningside Heights. Not too far from Columbia University, he’d guess. The Hudson laps a few feet away, not the Acheron or the Styx or the other rivers he’s used to, but just a regular one. Guess this is where Curt’s boat spat him out.

Frank sits there, trying to gather his wits, until he lurches to his feet. He definitely does not look like the dread Lord of the Underworld, though that might be a good thing in this case. He rubs his muddy hands on his jeans, which just makes both of them muddier, swears under his breath, and starts climbing the bank, struggling his way up to the bike and pedestrian thoroughfare. He can't blame several passing yuppie joggers for immediately and dramatically swerving well away from him, and a few hipsters practically jump out of their skinny jeans. (For the record, Frank’s not that fond of hipsters.) Finally, Frank manages to flag down a passing grad student, who plucks out one headphone and looks at him warily. “Yeah?”

“Hey. I’m sorry.” Frank clears his throat. It has been so long since he has had a face-to-face ordinary conversation with a non-dead human not named Karen that it feels like trying to make first contact with a Martian. “Real sorry, can I use your phone? I, uh, I obviously got a little messed up last night, I need to – yeah. Sorry.”

The grad student is dubious, but finally consents to hand over his phone, keeping an eagle eye on both of them as if Frank is gonna stuff the expensive gadget into his dirty-ass pants and make a break for it. Frank is then confronted with the fact that he, born in 1910 and technically dead since 1948, doesn’t really know how to use a goddamn smartphone, and pokes vainly at the screen until the grad student, clearly thinking he’s either still drunk or just a total idiot, unlocks it and shows him the dialing pad. Frank thinks about it for a long moment, then decides he can’t risk contacting Karen directly, not until he knows more about what’s going on up here. Might not be able to talk to her at all. Instead, figuring this will probably fuckin’ backfire but it’s not like he’s long on options, he calls someone else.

The phone rings a few times, Frank thinks grimly that of course he won’t answer, and then, all at once, he does. “Matt Murdock speaking.”

“Hey. Uh. Red.” Frank blows out a jagged breath. “Don’t fuckin’ hang up, all right?”

There is a very long silence on the other end, as Frank takes a few steps away from the avidly observing grad student. Finally Matt says, “Frank Castle.”

“Yeah.” They’ve met, if you can call it that, at the warehouse explosion masterminded by Wilson Fisk, where Frank warned Matt to stay away and where Matt of course nearly got his ass killed, and on another occasion as well, where they ended up on a rooftop and had a sustained difference in opinion. (The fact that Frank had Matt chained to a chimney probably helped.) Frank figures Karen has at least told Red and his sidekick, the shaggy-haired one, about what the deal is with them, not that that’s gonna make him jump to help Frank out. “Look, I’m in the city, and it’s important, and – I’m in Riverside Park, all right? Probably around 114th. You – can you come out here, huh, all right? We need to talk. A lot of people are in danger.”

It is clear that every bone in Matt’s body wants to ignore this, especially coming from him, but he also can’t ignore the last part. He can also probably at least acknowledge that Frank would not be calling him if it was anything but desperately urgent, and after a long pause, he says, very grudgingly, “Fine. Stay there. I’ll take the subway up, give me half an hour.”

Frank agrees, hangs up, and hands the phone back to its owner, who hurries away with it before anything else alarming can happen. Frank stares evilly at his back, then heads over to a park bench and sits down, somewhat overwhelmed with the rush of color and noise and sensation and _people._ Real people, living people, not the pale shadows shuffling in, long white scarves of bodiless souls. It’s been a long time since he did this, and it catches in his raw heart like a fishhook. He’s been below for years, for decades. He didn’t know how much he missed it until now. No man is an island and all that, but he has been the goddamn literal closest thing to one.

Frank half-dozes, and is only jerked from his reverie by the sound of approaching footsteps, the measured tap of a cane. He looks over blearily, and yeah, lo and behold. He’s almost grateful that Red’s blind, since otherwise he’s sure he’d start off the conversation by telling him that he looks like shit, which is true but unhelpful. Frank isn’t altogether sure why Red keeps up with the wounded-bird act, the cane and dark glasses and whatever, when he can kick the asses of an entire crime cartel (but not _kill,_ no, God fuckin’ forbid). If it’s supposed to get people to underestimate him, it’s definitely too late for that. Matt’s head turns, as if smelling or sensing or whatever else, and then he comes to a halt by the bench. “Castle.”

“Murdock.” Frank raises half a sardonic hand in greeting, though the bastard can’t see it. Doesn’t want to ask how he knew it was him, probably smells like river ass and whatever bum may have pissed on him when he was unconscious. “Guess you made it.”

Matt’s mouth tightens, as if to say that yes, he did, and yes, he’d like some answers. At last, he starts with the obvious question. “Why didn’t you call Karen?”

“Because I don’t know if I can fuckin’ talk to her, if I’m even supposed to be here, without something biting us in the ass.” Frank’s frustration roughens his voice more than usual. “That’s the deal, Red, you know? Six months together, six months apart, and they mean goddamn _apart._ It’s no barrel of shits and giggles. Besides, with what’s up here, there’s no way I risk tipping him off about us. You ever heard of Ares, Red? God of war?”

“Yeah.” Matt frowns. “But what does that have to do with – ”

“Because he’s here. He’s here in your precious fuckin’ New York City. He’s probably after my wife, but he could be after all of us.” Frank stares up at the leaves. With that, while Matt is on his heels and cannot venture any stupid interruptions, he explains it as concisely as he can. Who Billy Russo is, that he clawed his way out of Tartarus, come crawling out of hell, however you want to put it. That they’ve got to find him, and they’ve got to put him down, once and for all. Frank doesn’t want to hear any of Matt’s bullshit about not killing, about respecting human life. This is not a human, and it has no respect for life. It will devour as much as it can, and leave its poisonous roots deep in the hearts of everything it touches. They can stop him together, or Frank can stop him alone, but those are the only two choices. Take or goddamn leave it.

Matt doesn’t answer when Frank has finished, though a muscle works in his cheek. “So,” he says at last, almost ironically. “Hell _is_ empty, and all the devils are here?”

“Shakespeare?” Frank glances sidelong at him. _“The Tempest,_ right?”

The look on Matt’s face is clearly surprised that Frank knows any Shakespeare, which is annoying – he’s had a lot of time on his hands in the underworld, obviously, and he does like to read. But this isn’t the moment to exchange barbs about the other’s cultural literacy, and it is the truth, after all. “Yeah,” Frank says. “The Lord of the Dead and the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, guess that’s us. And once again, it turns out there’s a bigger one than us both. You fucked up getting Fisk, so if you think this one is too much – ”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” It looks as if Matt, to his great chagrin, has realized that he’s already committed to this rodeo, whether or not he wants to be. “But even if so – where exactly do we find him? It’s probably not like we can just walk up and – ”

“Yeah,” Frank says grimly. “I might have a few ideas.”

 

**VIII.**

Karen wakes up to the smell of something cooking. It takes a moment to register why exactly this would be strange, until it does – there is, after all, nobody else who is supposed to be in her apartment, let alone making her breakfast. She sits bolt upright, leaps out of bed, and practically runs into the kitchen, whereupon she screeches to a halt at the sight of Elektra Natchios, dangerous witch and trained assassin, nonchalantly frying eggs in a pan. Once again, she has not seen the need to be invited in, and smiles merrily. “Do you want toast?”

“I. . .” Karen opens her mouth, decides that asking why she’s there is pointless, and shuts it. She still feels gritty and grimy and wrung-out from crying herself to sleep last night, and while part of her is almost happy to see what passes for a friendly face, she is wary. “You.”

“Me.” Elektra shrugs, turns out the eggs onto a plate, and examines the blackened undersides critically. “I’m not really a cook. But I did say I would protect you, Persephone. So?”

Karen doesn’t really have the wherewithal to argue about this, even if her gorge rises somewhat at the burnt smell, and Elektra economically disposes of them and makes toast instead. Karen nibbles here and there, suddenly aware of the queasiness she’s been ignoring, as Elektra watches her with that intent dark gaze. When she’s swallowed as much as she can stomach, she says, “We need to go down to DHS and tell them about Rawlins.”

“Do we?” Elektra shrugs, moving to whisk away the plate. “If you want to get rid of him, it is much easier to let me do it. Telling the government and trusting that they will actually bestir themselves to do the right thing and root out a man who has long been part of them, who benefits them – no, I do not think so. Give the word, and I will kill him.”

Karen wonders what it is about her that attracts people willing to commit murder on her say-so, though to be fair, that’s not really what Frank does anymore. But she is not willing to just wink and turn a blind eye, either way. “No. Besides, we need to warn Madani – Dinah Madani, I saw Russo with her the other day, I think he’s been working on her. He might have been trying to get her to tell him what I – what I told her. You yourself said that Billy was dangerous.”

“Yes.” Elektra looks as if she thought that would encourage Karen to stay away, not rush closer. “But come now. Murdering him would be much more efficient, and the look on his face would be _very_ funny. I know you have used magic to kill before. You did it with Wilson Fisk.”

This is true, and Karen glances away. It’s not that she strictly objects to the morality – if anything, she fears that it might become too easy, if she allowed herself to do it habitually. And she doesn’t want to, she wants to do better, she wants to keep trying to be good, and if nothing else, Madani does not deserve to get caught up in this, completely unknowing, another helpless pawn. She will not have another death like Kevin’s on her conscience. “No,” Karen repeats. “We’re going to go talk to Dinah first.”

Elektra sighs, rolls her eyes in an aggravated way like a cat having been unfairly prevented from knocking a flower pot off a window, but does not openly object. Karen gets dressed, and they head down to the DHS office, whereupon it takes them somewhat less time than before to obtain entrance. They ride up in the elevator, Karen has even managed to get her hopes up that they will be able to warn Madani in time, and they walk down the hall to the special agent’s office at the end. The attaché accompanying them knocks, they open the door, and –

Karen has some sense that this is not good, this is definitely not good, even before it fully clicks who Madani’s visitor is, as the attaché starts to apologize for interrupting her. Elektra stops short, so does Karen, and Agent Orange – no, not Agent Orange, William Rawlins – looks pardonably surprised. Then he says, “Agent Madani. Speak of the devil, this _is_ the woman I was warning you about. I’d say my timing was fortunate, don’t you?”

Madani’s eyes flick back and forth between Rawlins and Karen. Karen has no idea what “warning” about her meant, but it can’t be anything good, and surely Madani will be more inclined to listen to a sane and sober intelligence professional, some uppity-up with a real title and institutional clout, rather than a possibly disturbed young woman who came in spouting an insane-sounding fairytale. There is a very awkward pause. Then Karen says, “And – what was he saying about me, exactly?”

Rawlins clears his throat. “I was warning Agent Madani, my colleague,” he says, in a tone that is only too happy to control the narrative, “that you are a known con woman and organizational saboteur, who has been placed in powerful corporations before with the intention of critically destabilizing them. I was familiarizing her with the Union Allied case, the unexplained death of Daniel Fisher, and some of the other notable incidents from your past, Miss Page. I believe you’ve also used the name Isabel Schaffer at some points, and there may be others. So if you wanted to spare us the trouble, and make a clean confession?”

Karen opens her mouth, stops, and stares furiously at Rawlins, who stares blandly back. But there’s a small, unpleasant smile quirking at his lips, as if to say that he gave her a chance to have everything she could ever want, held out the hand of plenty, and she was foolish enough to not only spurn it, but to go dig up all the bodies in his backyard. He will get her back and then some, that look says. He will destroy her, and not break a sweat.

Elektra, however, is still here, Rawlins was at least a little startled to see her at Karen’s side, and she is clearly not about to let this go without a fight. “Excuse me,” she says. _“Excuse_ me. I do not think this is remotely – ”

Madani divides a look between the lot of them that is half exasperated, half suspicious. Even if she might not have taken Karen completely seriously at first, the fact that she now has a high-ranking CIA officer in here trying to do damage control – and that officer matches the description Karen gave of Agent Orange – must be ringing some alarm bells. “Why doesn’t everyone just move slowly,” she says, hand moving toward the drawer where she must keep her gun. Not as if she’s likely to want to open fire in the middle of her own office, but nothing can be entirely ruled out. “Mr. Rawlins, I’ll take your information under advisement, but – ”

Rawlins gets to his feet, with an ugly, avid look on his face as he stares at Karen, a look that is imagining in loving detail how to dissect and destroy her. “You’ve made a big mistake, Miss Page,” he says. “And you, Miss Natchios, I’m not sure what you’re playing at, but I always knew you couldn’t be entirely trusted. So if I have to sacrifice both of you, well – ”

It’s possible that this is going to turn pretty gnarly indeed, when Karen hears the door open again behind them, and an unexplainable chill falls over the office. She goes stiff, does not even need to turn, and is frozen in place as she hears footsteps advance, click-click-click, the same patent-leather shoes and whiff of expensive cologne from the house in Westchester. No wonder War does well for himself; it’s an especially profitable time, right now. “How about,” Billy Russo drawls, “like you said, Dinah, nobody make any sudden moves.”

Elektra clearly thinks that this is exactly what she intends to do, and starts to go for whatever hidden katana or other weapon she might keep on her person, but Billy flicks a hand at her, almost lazily, and an invisible shockwave knocks Elektra sideways. She hits the wall, he makes another gesture, and iron chains slam and spiral into existence to lock her down, as Madani’s eyes bug out. She clearly was still hedging her bets on the magic thing, but this is quite an explosive demonstration, literally, and she looks wildly between everyone. “What the – ”

“Sorry,” Billy says. “You were fun, and all. But it so happens, it’s your lucky day. I’m here for only one person. You give her to me, I don’t have to hurt the rest of you.” He turns his head, and looks directly at Karen. “Unless you’re feelin’ feisty? Frankie likes those types.”

Madani is still, to say the least, slightly gobsmacked, but as Billy makes a move toward Karen, she recovers herself, reaching for her gun. “I can’t let you take Miss Page.”

“Didn’t ask you to _let_ me do anything.” Billy is in his element, a red-black shadow beginning to flicker around him like an aurora. He will only get stronger the more they fight. “But if you’re gonna be difficult, you’ll make me do it, I guess. Little extra bit of proof. So – ”

With that, he waves his hand again, another shockwave bursts out across the office, and the next instant, they aren’t in it anymore. They are hitting the ground in what Karen recognizes as one of the abandoned railyards under Grand Central, one of the dim warrens that leads into the underworld. Billy must be intending to storm the gates himself, with the queen as useful hostage, and Karen, still winded from the fall, tries desperately to crawl away, but he strides over, grabs her by both wrists, and jerks her to her feet. “Uh-uh. You’re gonna call the boat. Don’t you wanna see him? Your Frankie? Huh? Don’t you?”

Karen struggles to conjure up her magic, the vines that she used to kill Fisk, but that was dependent on her being able to physically plunge her hands into the earth, and there is no earth down here. Besides, she can’t start even a spark, as Billy’s essence washes over her like a poisonous black cloud, cutting her off from life and breath and blossom. Behind her, Rawlins has grabbed Madani, who was understandably stunned by falling out of her office and into a rusty underground switchyard, and Elektra is still chained up, though they can see her jerking and struggling ferociously. Karen likewise keeps fighting, and Billy throws an arm around her throat, crushing her windpipe, as she gags. In her ear, he snarls, “CALL IT!”

Tears are forced out of Karen’s eyes as she struggles to get her feet under her, but Billy drags her forward like a rag doll. He reaches the place where the tunnel begins to fork somewhat from reality, where one passage leads to a different realm than another, and Karen can feel the breath of the underworld on her face, maddeningly, desperately close. She is half-tempted to scream for Frank anyway, but if he comes up here, into this – if their rules are forever broken, and perhaps she can never go back –

She’s starting to lose consciousness, bright spots popping in front of her eyes, and her magic is useless. She has half-decided that she might let Billy kill her rather than serve as live bait for Frank, but the urge to survive is too strong, and she twists again, clawing at his face. He dodges, grabbing at her arms, is drawing back a fist – not the stomach, Karen thinks, don’t let him hit her in the stomach, he can’t, he –

_“RUSSO!”_

The voice echoes thunderously in the chamber, rolling off the pillars and rattling the walls, and Karen jerks her head up wildly to see – it can’t be, it _can’t be,_ and yet somehow it is – her husband in the flesh. Yet she has never seen Frank look like this, full night and terror unleashed, lashes of hellfire burning in and out of existence around him as he strides forward, the shape of a skull visible where it stretches in the air, and the entire world shivering in holy dread as his footfalls strike like lightning bolts. This is not the gruff hobo in a hoodie that Karen first met on that day back in Times Square, with a hint of the unnatural but nothing more. This is the Lord of the Underworld, God of Death, and nobody laying eyes on him just now would be in any doubt of that fact. If those eyes were not then burned out, and if they had any sense to speak.

Even more unbelievably, Frank isn’t alone. It takes Karen’s bedazzled eyes another instant to be sure, but then she recognizes none other than Matt Murdock himself, in full Daredevil regalia. While the story of why and how they are here together is potentially a very fascinating one, there is no time to catch up. Billy has been momentarily caught off guard – he was hoping for Frank to turn up, but not from that direction – and Karen can’t waste it. His grip on her has slackened, and she can just about get a spark. It blooms into a fireball, and she whirls and slams it into his face.

Billy howls, stumbling backward, even as witchfire can’t hurt or scar him permanently. It is, however, enough for Karen to break free, and she runs wildly across the tracks, just as there’s a burn and flare of black light and Frank leaps past her too fast to be seen. The next instant, he is hailing out of the air like a meteor, hits Billy full-on, and the entire world seems to shake at the force of their collision. The world goes briefly and completely black, as if all the power has been unplugged, then lurches back, and a sonic boom crashes against Karen’s ears. Bleeding, she crawls on all fours toward Elektra, whose struggles seem to be getting weaker. That, or –

Overhead, she is aware of another blur of motion as Matt goes after Rawlins, who is forced to relinquish Madani in order to defend himself. He’s clearly no amateur, blocking Matt’s first flurry of blows and punching back, and while they are brawling it out, Karen jerks her head frantically at Madani. “Help me!”

Madani looks as if this might be a nightmare and she still has a chance of waking up if she blinks very hard, but after another moment, she plunges forward and tries to help Karen tear off the chains. Karen hisses when she touches them – there must be something woven into their making that is inimical to witches, the reason Elektra is succumbing – but that doesn’t stop her. As they’re working, Madani jerks her head wildly at Frank, or rather the blur that is Frank and Billy. “Who is – should we be worried about what that – ”

“That’s my husband,” Karen pants. She doesn’t know if Frank and Matt went somewhere else and then realized their mistake, or came here all along, but it doesn’t matter. She almost wants to laugh, to gasp in wild relief, even though she can’t help but exist in terror that this will be it, the uttermost end. “He’s here to help us.”

Madani does a double take that would be comical in other circumstances, somehow manages to focus on the job at hand, and with another few moments, they manage to get Elektra free, like cutting a dolphin from a net. She rolls loose, coughing, then jumps to her feet. As Matt has his hands full with Rawlins, she raises her voice. _“Matthew!”_

Both Matt and his adversary look around, Matt is startled enough that he almost gets into even more trouble, and Elektra pounces. She slams Rawlins like a hurricane – he might be human, but he clearly went to some lengths to protect himself from his dangerous magical minions, and he’s not wearing down like an ordinary man might – and Matt, still slack-jawed, has to recover enough to continue the fight. He and Elektra instinctively fall into tag-teaming Rawlins, with an ease which, even after all this time, looks like they used to do this a lot, like they still remember how to cover each other’s weak side like they remember how to breathe. Karen and Madani struggle to their feet, Karen tries to shield the agent since she is the only genuinely non-magical, non-powered individual caught in this no-holds-barred throwdown, and thinks that she should get Madani out of here – but Frank is here, Frank is fighting for his life and all of their existence, she might be contractually obligated to walk away, but she did tell Orange that she’s used to the law being what it needs to be, and what if she doesn’t? What if she just goddamn refuses to be separated from Frank again, no matter what? What would they do? What would anyone do?

While she’s still trying to guard Madani, the air whistles and snaps like a cracked whip, something comes lashing out of it, snags Karen by the ankle, and jerks her into thin air. She claws for something to grab hold of, finds nothing, and then is aware of the fact that she is being dangled over a chasm opening up in the rails, splitting the earth and belching brimstone – and more than that, annihilation, abyss, _nothingness._ She kicks and struggles, even as she is aware that she is being held up by a slender tendril of shadow and if it snaps, she will fall down, very, very far down, as far as anyone can fall, farther than Lucifer, farther than life. “What do you think?” Billy shouts. “Should I drop her into Tartarus too? She can get real good and comfortable, just like I did! Suffer everything I did, a hundred, a _thousand_ times over!”

Karen can’t see much, but she can just make out the stark and spectral terror on Frank’s face, as he stands there, just a few feet away, and absolutely cannot risk doing anything that would cause her to fall. In fact, he might have to beg, and that is the one thing he refuses to do in any circumstances – but it’s this, it’s her, it’s the one great tragedy of his entire life playing out inexorably in front of him once again, more than he even knows, and Billy Russo is once more the architect of it. As he remains frozen, Billy’s lips draw back in the insane rictus of a smile. “You might still be a god, Frankie,” he says. “But now I’m a god _destroyer.”_

Frank makes a convulsive motion, as if he will throw himself into the pit first if need be, so he could at least have a shot at catching her. That, however, is not something that Karen Page intends to let come to pass. She is a witch, Persephone, queen of the underworld, and she too is really goddamn tired of Ares and his bullshit. She jerks, twists around, aims a magical torrent at the tendril holding her above the abyss, and fires.

To say the least, Billy was not expecting her to break the one Ariadne’s-thread leading her to safety, and as it snaps, he is knocked backward, straight toward Frank. Karen falls, for an utterly unspeakably terrifying moment there is nothing below her but the plunge and the depths of Tartarus, and then she catches onto a rail, dangling precariously high above the abyss as she struggles to pull herself to safety. Frank can either take his one clear shot at Billy, or he can completely throw it away and leave himself wide open and try to pull her up, and even as Karen tries to shout at him through her scorched throat to do it, to finish him, _finish him,_ Frank is past the point of no return. He is above her in the next instant, and his hands grip both her wrists, hauling her free, to safer ground, away from the crack. He might be about to completely and comprehensively trash any and all rules whatsoever, wrap her in his arms and for them to stay like that for the next century, but –

Karen’s scream of warning gets stuck in her throat –

Billy bares his teeth, no hint of prettiness remaining, nothing but a mad, wild mask of rage and insanity, as he swings the sword overhead and then plunges it into Frank’s back as far as he can, twisting, _twisting._ It’s not made of any ordinary metal, anything except what he just said – _a god destroyer –_ and Karen is too horrified to even make a sound as Billy rips it out. Frank’s face goes half-blank, not even really registering the pain. Then he folds, going slowly to his knees, and in that moment, it becomes clear that indeed, the god of death can die after all.

Karen does not know what comes over her then either, except transcendent insanity. That somehow she is on her feet, and charging at Billy, and he raises the sword and prepares to stab her too, but she rips it out of his hand almost contemptuously. Her magic burns and blasts and howls, the way it did when she killed her brother, her own brother, terrified and unknowing. That was uncontrollable, but this is deliberate, this is purposeful, this is unrelenting. She dives for the sword, snatches it up, and whirls on him, as the crack yaws open just a few feet from them and she drives him backward, teeth bared, snarling, as even the god of war must dodge and duck and weave to avoid the blows. He raises an arm, trying to shield himself, and Karen slashes it clean through, as it falls like a broken branch. Then swings back the sword, slams it through him from belly to backbone, and does not stop even when it bursts out the other side. Rips it out with a grate and a rush of slow dark blood, slams it back in, and kicks him with both feet into hell.

Billy’s mouth opens, almost shocked, and then he falls. He is jerking and struggling reflexively as he goes over the edge, but then his eyes are glazing, and he is tearing apart in black ash, and he is charring, twisting away into nothingness. He is dying, he is dead, he is disintegrating, and yet, Karen can spare no thought for him, not a single one more. She throws down the sword after him, stands there frozen an instant longer, then whirls and runs desperately to her husband.

Frank is still alive when she lifts him into her arms, but only just. He looks up at her, struggles to lift his bloody hand to touch her cheek, and his lips quiver. “Kar. . . Karen. . .”

“No,” she gasps, half a prayer and half a sob, nothing but the promise of the worst thing she has ever known, that she cannot possibly experience and live. She thinks of him finding her mortally injured after the battle with Fisk, how she had to eat the pomegranate seeds or die, and just then, an impossible, reckless, idiotic idea comes to her. If that was to sentence her to six months in the _under_ world, might there be any chance, any whatsoever, of allowing him to stay the _other_ six months in the _over –_

No time to be sure, or to worry about which magical regulators they might piss off, or any of it. Karen’s free hand is shaking almost too hard to manage, but she clenches it, focuses as hard as she can, opens her fingers again, and the next instant, there is a fruit in her hand. It looks like a pomegranate, but its skin is thick and pearlescent-white, almost glowing. She lowers it to his mouth. “Frank,” she breathes. “Frank, if you – if we – ”

For a brief, terrible moment, she thinks he isn’t going to take it. That he’s decided, not unreasonably, that he has lived long enough, spent enough time in the court and the garden of the dead without ever taking the last step over, and that he wants to give it up, to be at rest. To go and be with his family again, his first family, his real family (as Karen cannot repress a sudden fear that he sees it, even as she must not, she struggles not to begrudge him). If that is what he wants, then somehow, she must bear it. Even as she knows that she would not.

She is aware of silence behind her, something heightened, almost spellbound. She cannot look around to see if Matt and Elektra have managed to finish off Rawlins, if Madani is unhurt, or any of it. She can only see Frank, and feel the coolness of his immortal blood on her hands, as at last, he lifts his head with a painful groan, and takes a bite of the fruit.

It takes one bite – two bite – three bite – four, and the wounds begin to close, and the agony is smoothed off his face as his contorted body slowly begins to relax in her arms. Karen continues to hold him, and he sighs and groans again, and nips off one more mouthful. He goes limp against her, and it takes all of her strength not to fear that he has in fact slipped into the dark river he has traveled so many times, but as master and not as supplicant. But his face is easier, softer, at peace, and it becomes clear that he is in fact soundly asleep. He is alive. She has no idea what she has done now, how she has changed the great madness and the magic that governs their lives, and yet she could not bring herself to care.

She hears a rustle, and looks around to see Matt and Elektra not sure whether they should move forward, or back, or toward each other. There is an indistinct heap on the ground that must be Rawlins – it’s hard to tell if he’s still alive, though Madani, shaken but undaunted, is slapping him into cuffs  just to be safe. Elektra takes a few steps away, and Matt says convulsively, “You. You. What have – what do you think you’re – ”

“Matthew.” It’s hard to tell in the dark, but an unspeakably sad smile quirks at her lips. “It was good to see you.”

With that, as Matt is still dumbstruck, as simply and easily as she vanished from Karen’s apartment, Elektra is no longer there. A scent lingers in the air like some whiff of jasmine or hyacinth or something else, something stranger and rarer and sweeter. Matt’s head turns back and forth, as if to confirm that she is gone, and he takes a few helpless steps toward Karen, still sitting right where she is with Frank in her arms. Croakily, he says, “You – you okay?”

Karen doesn’t know. She might be, and she might not, and it all seems twisted and tangled and completely impossible to say. Frank is still asleep, though his chest is rising and falling slowly, and just then, if there is any truth to the fairytales, any hint of a very old and powerful magic, even among the skyscrapers and the wars and a government witch-spy program called Kronos, she wants to find out. She lowers her mouth to Frank’s, and lightly, tentatively, she kisses him.

For a moment, nothing happens. Then there’s a flutter, a rush and a breath like ice breaking in a spring thaw, or the first bud on a tree, and it spreads outward in the dimness like ripples on a pond. Frank’s chest jerks, and his eyes move wildly beneath closed lids, and all at once, they open. His last proper memory, of course, is of Billy stalking them both, stalking her, and he almost goes off like a bomb. “What the – what the fu – where’s h – ?”

“Shh,” Karen says, half-crying, half-laughing, as she lowers her head and brushes their noses, their cheeks, their foreheads, then kisses him again, because if he is about to be snatched into the underworld again and away from her arms, she is not going to waste a moment – or, for that matter, ever let go. “Billy’s gone. Remember?”

Frank stares at her, not quite believing this, until it passes over his face, the memory of whatever he must have seen in those moments of pain and delirium, Karen fighting Billy single-handed. He groans and shakes his head. “Jesus Christ, Karen. One day you are actually gonna kill me.”

“Not today.” Karen giggles painfully, lifts him more comfortably against her, and they kiss again, as Frank reaches up to tangle his fingers in her hair and cup the back of her neck, as she can sense Matt watching them (or sensing, or hearing the rush of their heartbeats and the euphoric desperation of their embrace, tasting the salt of their tears, and perhaps, at last, understanding), but he doesn’t say a word. They kiss until they are good and goddamn ready to stop, which takes a while, and Frank swears and slowly sits up, turning to her and cupping her face in both hands, running his thumbs over her cheeks, her neck, her shoulders. He murmurs incoherently and leans forward to kiss her collarbone, and much as she is tempted to let him continue, Karen also thinks they should do it elsewhere. “Come on,” she whispers. “Come on.”

Frank allows her to haul him to his feet (Matt has to offer a hand as well), and she steadies him, as they tramp heavily down the tunnel toward Madani and Rawlins. At their approach, the former looks up with a start, takes in Frank’s _Frank-ness_ from head to toe, and is clearly at a loss for words. Finally she manages, “So. . . you’re. . . Karen’s husband.”

“Yeah.” Frank doesn’t take umbrage whatsoever about being identified this way. In fact, he seems quite proud. “And you are?”

“Long story,” Karen says, shifting Frank’s weight on her shoulder. Once more, she wants to laugh, and laugh some more, and it comes bubbling out of her until she can barely breathe. “In fact, I have a whole goddamn lot to tell you.”

 

**IX.**

The summer evening is lazy and long and golden, the western sky streaked with pink and purple and crimson where the sun sinks away, Apollo’s chariot completed its run so Artemis can emerge to rule the night, and from where they stand, looking up at the ruins, Frank and Karen can, for once, simply enjoy the view. It turns out that they floodlight the Parthenon and the other impressive bits at night, and his arm tightens around her, even as he is using the other hand to keep Penny from running off. She is three years old, and it goes entirely without saying, ridiculously prone to trouble.

“You want to get dinner?” Frank asks, once the sun has vanished and they can hear talk and music and laughter from the various cafes, wineries, and bistros lining the street below. This is Athens, there should be no shortage of good food, though they can’t go anywhere too adult and fancy. Penny can behave like an absolute angel when she wants to, but still. They have another two weeks in Greece, and should probably ease her in. “Sound like a good plan?”

“Yeah.” Karen smiles at him, they lean in for a quick kiss, link arms, and start to walk. Penelope darts ahead of them, and Frank yells at her not too far, all right, stay in sight. There will never not be a day when he is at least somewhat overprotective of her, though he is doing his best. Their life has settled into its new rhythm, and so it goes. Six months together in the underworld, five months together in human New York, and one month where, still, they have to be apart. Frank can return to the underworld, or Karen can, but either way, they have to trade places. Five bites of the fruit to save his life, however, means that he can spend those five months in the human realm with her. The Fates can manage the dead below (and probably feel like they do a better job of it than he does), while Hades gets to live in the sunlight with Persephone, and while they still must part, it’s much easier to bear the prospect of a few weeks, a brief hiatus, perhaps some personal time, before they are once more together. They have a real life this way, even if one still lived between two worlds. Penny has been to both. The underworld holds no terrors for her. They even caught her once, gnawing on a shockingly compliant Cerberus’s ears. That dog is completely devoted to her. It’s really kind of adorable, little girl and her three-headed hellhound. In about fifteen years or so, the entire world should probably get ready to tremble.

 _Penelope,_ Karen thinks. That was her mother’s name, and part of her cannot help but hope that she is doing this enough, she is doing this right. _Penny_ reminds Frank of some old calming rhyme, some book he used to read to Lisa – _one batch, two batch, penny and dime_ – and there’s also that last sense. Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, the wanderer. The steadfast spouse (whether or not he deserved it is another matter) the fighter, the defender of her honor and the outwitter of suitors, who may in her turn journey across another sea, and find the black ships before Troy. Karen thinks they could do worse than that, to give their daughter as a legacy.

They step down into the street, and Frank glances around with a look of wry amusement. They get to do things like this now, to travel and see the world, in the five months he lives above ground, and he’s still readjusting to it. He considers, then collars Penny as she’s about to run off again and sweeps her up into his other arm, nodding at the restaurant across the way. “That one.”

Karen trots over to check. “Well, okay, looks cute. The menu’s only in Greek, though.”

Frank scoffs. “What? Come on. What kind of fuckin’ Lord of the Underworld would I be if I couldn’t read Greek? Jesus, Karen.”

She raises both eyebrows at him, but supposes that he has a point. Then she grins and holds out her hand, and he takes it, and they step inside. The proprietor, a genial fellow with a black mustache and a striped apron, does not have a clue that Hades and Persephone themselves have come to dine under his roof tonight, but that is probably for the best. He seats them and recommends them a fine wine and something to start with, speaking English out of deference to their apparently obvious American-ness, and Frank listens politely and then answers in fluent Greek, clearly surprising (if impressing) him. Karen bites her lip, glancing down to hide a smile. Oh, Frank. Always has to be a curmudgeon.

They enjoy their dinner, and take a while over it, though they have to leave when Penny starts getting tired and fussy. They pay the bill and walk up the street toward their bed-and-breakfast, whitewashed houses and frothing window boxes of flowers, people still sitting outside, smoking and talking. Penny is dozing off on Frank’s shoulder as they climb, and Karen glances sidelong at them and still cannot quite wrap her head around how so much love is possible.

They reach the B&B, head up to their room, and put Penny to bed. Then they step out on the balcony together, lean on the railing and gaze down on the city below – not Mount Olympus, perhaps, but not a bad view. Frank slides his arm around her, and Karen leans her head on his chest. And so they stand there, a god and a goddess in a quiet mortal peace, in a finally unbreakable union, and perhaps, in the wind, the night smells of home.


End file.
